Super Bowl Party!!

So last Sunday was the Super Bowl, and for the last several years we have been hosting a Super Bowl Party for the members of our fantasy football league.  Now it is football, and football does involve a lot of men watching tv.  So it would be really easy for me to as my husband says "cheese it up" too much.  It is a very fine line between cool football party and cheesy kiddie football party.  What I have found works best is a few decorations ( usually items from the two teams playing), a lot of food, and some very well picked games. 

First for the decorations.  This year I hung a few football cutouts on the light over the dining room table.  The I made a Super Bowl Centerpiece.  I ordered pom poms in each of the teams colors.  I think they were about $1.50 each ($3 total).  I also ordered the Super Bowl pennant ($3) for this year along with mylar balloons ($6 total) for each team.  I gathered some things from around the house ( yellow bucket, my son's fox sports football robot, yellow shredded paper, tape, Styrofoam and dowel rod) to use.  I stuffed the bucket with the foam, covered it with the shredded paper.  Then I taped the pennant to the dowel rod and pushed it into the foam, and I tied the balloons to the pom poms, and stuck them into the foam.  After I had everything placed where I wanted it in the foam I placed the robot in the middle and draped some football beads over it.  In the end I was in it for about $16 with s/h.

I used a vinyl "grass" table cloth on the dinning room table, and I placed the food in "football" themed trays and serving dishes.  I also made a few "team items" using team colors and little tags with team logos.  I dipped pretzel rods in yellow chocolate and sprinkled some with black sprinkles and some with green.  I put them in bags and tied a ribbon and tag to them.  I also made football pops and football helmet pops out of chocolate for the kids to have.  The last "football" food item I made was sugar cookies.  I made helmets and footballs.  I iced the helmets black and green for team colors.  I don't think I have a picture of them, but they were cute.  I really don't have any great pictures, because I forgot to take any before the party started.  I hurried and snapped a few when I remembered.

Now for the fun stuff!  Games!  Ok, I'm sure you are thinking this is a little crazy, but I think this is what my guests love most about my parties.  Now don"t get me wrong, these are still mostly guys we are talking about.  So I revolve my "games" around what these boys love best:  taking a little risk, and proving how much they know about sports! 
This year we did the football squares again.  We play this every year.  It's great because you can know absolutely nothing about football and still win.  What we did different this year was adding different entry price games.  We had a 25 square game at $5 a square, 100 square game at $3 a square, and a 100 square game for .50 cents a square.  It made it easy for everyone to enter.  Who doesn't have .50 cents to risk?  But I try to think of everyone when having a party, and some folks just might not want to pay to play.  Not a problem.  Before the big day I went out around town and picked up numerous little football related items.  I tend to get a lot of MU Tiger and Chiefs items just because those are our local college and pro teams.  I picked up some nice (dishwasher safe) super bowl XLV cups at party city for .99 cents each, and they also had a lot of Chiefs stuff (antenna helmet, decals, can kuzzies, playing cards,etc.)  I think I spent about $35 in total on prizes, but I had a lot of stuff.  So I had a huge bucket full of prizes to had out to my winners.  I ended up with some left over that I can use for next years winners.
Winners of what you say?  Well I printed out a list of super bowl trivia questions and answers.  During the commercials I would walk around and offer trivia questions.  Whoever answered correctly first got to pick a prize.  You would be surprised at how much people enjoy this.  Especially the men who think they know it all when it comes to football :)  I also had a prop questionnaire for guest to fill out.  All they had to do was answer about ten questions on the game. For example:  Who would win the coin toss?  Would the first score of the game be a touchdown. field goal, or safety? and so on.  The tie breaker at the end was total points scored.  I had a helper watch the game for all the answers, and the people who had the most correct won prizes out of the bucket.  Everyone had a great time participating in the games!

So onto the invitations and food.  I used punchbowl.com for my invitations.  The reason I chose to use this is simple:  1.) people actually RSVP when they can use their email   2.)  it offers a "potluck" list that people can choose food to bring from a list or add their item to the list.  When planning a party one of the most important things to know is how many guests you can expect, and for me the potluck option is a wonderful tool that helps you know what people are bringing and avoid duplicates.  It's never good when half of the guests show up with chip and the other bring pop.  This helps you list ideas that you think would be good and gives people the option of bringing something else if they so choose.  I usually provide food for my parties, but the super bowl is my one exception.  We have so many people come, so it's so nice to have people help out.  plus it helps me be able to spend money on things like the prizes and so on.