Party Planning For Everyone

Invitations

E-mailing and phone calls are great ways to reach out to guests, but take it to the next level by using evite.com. This is a great online tool to help you design invites, manage RSVPs and count heads. You can choose from stock designs or design your won. Best of all, it’s free.

If you plan ahead, you can order these cool ticket invites online at party411.com. They’re not free, but they’re a great way to tell your guests that this is going to be a big party.

Decor

Balloons: Balloons add a lot of atmosphere for just a little money. Buy packets of balloons with the teams’ colors and tape them up on corners, at your door, on your mailbox – heck, anywhere! If you’re having kids over, be sure to get extra ones for them.

Other decorations: Footballs, novelty footballs, team banners and posters can all enhance the party experience.

Tables: Get creative – you can get cheap green plastic tablecloths and use white tape to mark yard lines so your tables look like football fields. Or use the teams’ colors. If you have any football themed server ware, this is the perfect time to use it. Have an old football helmet lying in a closet somewhere? Dig it out, prop it up and put a container inside to hold snacks or dip.

Tableware: Have lots of small plates, napkins and cups on hand. Dollar stores or discount centers often have football themed bargains, so check there first. Seriously, though, no one will care if you just have plain white foam plates and plain plastic cups as long as you don’t run out.

Snacking areas: Try to keep people out of the kitchen by setting up snacks in two or three areas of your home for foods that don’t need to be kept hot or cold. For those foods, set aside another area. Use hotplates or a sterno setup for hot foods. Keep cold foods cold by placing containers inside another container full of ice. Make sure to check this periodically and replace melted ice with fresh ice when necessary.

Trash: Place large waste baskets lined with plastic trash bags close to gathering areas so that you’re not finding abandoned plates and cups everywhere.

Watching the game: Ideally, you should have more than one TV and keep a laptop or PC on so everyone can check out the real-time voting results on SpotBowl.com. Of course, make sure everyone knows to keep drinks away from your computer.

Use your digital camera or Smartphone to post to a photo-sharing site like flickr.com and display the photos as a slideshow during the party.

Bathrooms: Make sure everyone knows where the bathrooms are. Decorate the mirrors with erasable or water-based markers and leave a few on the sinks for any guests who feel creative. If kids are coming, make sure you can rescue any who accidentally lock themselves in the bathroom.

Games

Voting for the ads: Print out and distribute SpotBowl ballots so your guests can rank the commercial spots. They can vote during your party, at home later on or use any Smartphone to cast their votes at SpotBowl.com.

Football autographs: Have your guests sign a regulation size football with a black marker as they arrive. You can raffle this off for someone to win at the end of the night or even have some friendly wagering going on about what the final score will be, with the football going to whoever was closest.

Football fan face painting: You know you want to! Face painting can be fun for everyone, adults and kids. Make sure that any face paint you buy specifically states that it’s safe for the skin, hypoallergenic, nontoxic and water based.

Best dressed: Encourage your guests to come in their favorite football jersey or clothing, even if it’s for a high school team or pee-wee squad. You could even have a contest to encourage guests to go all out.

Noisemakers: You don’t want the neighbors to call the cops on you, but, hey, it’s the game of the year! Get some horns, metal noisemakers and even cowbells to celebrate big moments in the game. You can also encourage your guests to bring some.

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