St. Patrick's Day party

We had a St. Patty's day party with adults-only (notice I didn't say an Adult St. Patty's Day party?  Totally different conotations to that!)  I had to set two tables to accomodate the 18 guests we had. 

The green thingies in the glass jar on the left are moss-covered styrofoam stones from the dollar store.  They reminded me of Ireland when I saw them.  Nearly all the decor came from the dollar store, or was something I had already.  I'm becoming a fan of the glass beads.  They dress up a table, and come in almost every shade.

The flower vase is a beer mug from the dollar store.  This was an alcohol-free party, but I thought it was still fun to add the "true" Irish element to the decor:)

I thought the addition of a sliced lime to the cup rim was so creative, but the instructions didn't mention needing to use glass cups; the limes were too heavy and tumbled the glasses, until I got smart and added ice to the bottom to weigh them down.

The beverage was rainbow sherbet and Sprite.  I had intended to hang the "Irish kissing ball" in the archway leading to the Great Room, like an Irish mistletoe, but forgot.  So here is where it ended up.  Another idea forgotten: a Blarney stone inside the front door to kiss for luck.

It's not a Jill party without cupcakes.  Here are my green velvet cupcakes with buttercream and chocolate cream cheese icing, and my creation, mint chocolate ganache-filled cupakes with mint buttercream icing.  Oh, they were delish!

Aren't cupcakes divine?

I asked everyone to bring a green side dish; I had everyone email me their dish choice so we didn't end up with 4 green salads.  I made Thai cilantro chicken and pasta.  The cilantro sauce made it green.  You can see it in the white dish on the upper right.

I love white Christmas lights in decor!  The bar decor consisted of floating limes, and some silk flowers I spray-painted green and stuck in my Bloom Box I found on clearance at Zurcher's many months ago.  They resembled 4-leaf clovers when green.

Non-alcoholic Jello shots.  I googled a recipe, but just ended up making it up myself.  These have lime jello, green tea Sobe, and a little heavy whipping cream.

I loved the green deviled eggs.

After dinner we played a few games.  I bought about 20 green items from the dollar store: Irish spring soap, green candy, Andes mints, etc.  Everyone sat in a circle, and I dumped the items on the floor in the middle of the circle.  As I read a silly Irish folk tale story that I had made up, when I said the name of an item, the one who grabbed it first got to keep it.  This worked well with the number of people we had, and is easily adapted to fit any holiday or theme.

We played another game I got off of Maggies Dinner Dates in which one member of the group reads a question, and everyone else in the group answers it anonomously on a slip of paper.  The person then collects the papers and reads them out loud, trying to guess who answered what.  We played this in husband-wife teams, which worked well.  The party went for close to 5 hours, with the first couples to leave after about 3 hours.  The last hour was just spent visiting.