Thank you Cost Plus World Market for teaming up with me on this post!
Hi Friends! We are officially in our Florida home- I’ll give you a full tour on Wednesday, so check back for that. Yesterday, we threw a party as a sort of house warming and to watch football. I thought that this would be good inspiration for the big game coming up!
I’m going to be honest- when it comes to football parties I’m in it for the food and decor! If you search decorations for big game parties- you’ll come up with the same thing over and over again- brown and green colors, footballs everywhere. I wanted something more fun and colorful! Especially since we’re in Miami now!
So I came up with the idea of doing a rainbow theme- you could have a rainbow over a football game- right?! Bright and colorful are huge trends right now so I figured that I’d embrace it!
diy taper candle holder tutorial
The star of my party is this fun and simple taper candle holder. I thought I’d share how to make it in a few simple steps:
Materials:
4″x4″ beam- cut to 12″ long
Taper Candles in Rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, lime green, emerald green, blue, maroon)
The most important element for this DIY are the candles- it can be tricky to find good ones that aren’t insanely expensive. All of these are from Cost Plusย World Market and I shopped online for them (and the other key pieces for this party). I usually shop at the Farmington, Utah location, but didn’t get a chance before our move. To find the store closest to you, here’s their store locator.
Mark on your piece of wood with a pencil where you’d like your candles to go. I spaced them an 1- 1/2″ from each other to make sure that they don’t touch when they are lit. Safety first!
Use a 3/4″ spade bit attached to your drill and drill holes where you marked.
Lightly sand all surfaces to clean up any jagged pieces of wood. Paint your desired color (I went with white) or leave the wood natural.
Insert the candles into the holes. Quick tip- if your candles are too thick for the holes (like mine were), use a potato peeler to shave off the bottoms. It works super well!
All done! How cute did it turned out?! Here is my inspiration for this project.
bright and colorful big game party
Once I had my centerpiece ready, I thought of other ways to bring in the rainbow colors. I am a simple girl and don’t get too fancy with food, so these suggestions are easy and mostly store bought ;)! Here are some more easy entertaining ideas.
I made fruit kabobs with rainbow colored fruit. In case you’re wondering, my son ate everyone’s strawberry- lol. I also colorized the candy into colors of the rainbow. To do this, put each color in a different bowl. Next, use a big bowl and lay the bowl on its side. Add the candy in color by color until you have the rainbow!
I kept it simple with store bought cupcakes that had rainbow sprinkles on them. FYI- the skittles arranged in rainbow order were quite delicious to eat that way!
For the drinks, I used a variety of sodas in glass bottles. I tried to buy them in rainbow color to carry out the theme. Bonus points because this gives guests lots of drink choices!
Besides rainbow colored food, I also put out some traditional football food. How cute are these football pretzels?! Cost Plus World Marked had a while variety of pretzels. Side note, I never say no to cheese and crackers!
The one “fancy” food I did serve was mini Shepard’s Pies. I got these pre-made from Cost Plus World Market! They were really, really delicious and I love that they made me look like a fancy chef!
decor
I loved throwing in a little accent of gold with the glasses. I felt like it looked like the “gold at the end of the rainbow”. For napkins, I choose a colorful option to bring in a few of the rainbow colors.
For flowers, I went with big white lilies. Can I tell you how amazing these smell in my kitchen?! I originally was considering going with different rainbow flowers, but I didn’t want it to look cluttered and am super happy with how it turned out!
Every party can be elevated by adding in a letterboard with a quote on it! This one is by Tammy from Friday Night Lights and pretty much sums up how I feel about football- haha!
party time
When it was time to party, I lit all of the candles on the candle holder. Don really thought it was his birthday and he blew them right out- it was pretty cute! And smoky!
We had our only two friends in Florida over to party. The dogs loved the occasional crumb Don dropped ;). We enjoyed the football game while snacking on the delicious food. All in all it was a success! So what do you think? Would you throw a rainbow, bright and colorful football party?ย 
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