create: 50's housewife bachelorette party

so this is my girl, leigh. congratulate her, as she is getting married this weekend!

in honor of her soon-to-be "wifehood", I, along with her four other maids, threw a "50's housewife bachelorette party" for her last weekend.....complete with the preparation of a 50's inspired meal, frilly aprons, pearls, and the like...our party was inspired by this article in a 1955 edition of Good Housekeeping...read it for yourself...and ladies, try not to throw up :-)

so our evening began with a lesson in how to be transformed into a well-dressed housewife from the 50's: ribbon in the hair, fresh apron around the waist, pearls around the neck, and a thick coat of ugly red lipstick!

each of the girls chose an authentic retro apron and retro pearls (yay for antique shops!)

then we all tied ribbons in our hair....

and slathered on the lipstick....

and here we are....all dolled up and ready to cook like a good housewife should!

our menu consisted of: Meatloaf Wellington (YUCK)...Caesar Salad.....Baked Mac and Cheese Casserole....Cranberry Jello Mold (yay for jello molds!)....and Homemade Apple Pie (yum!)...so the girls divided up the recipes, tightened their aprons, and got to work! While we cooked, we were serenaded by the "Do-Wop" station on Pandora.com. (yay for Pandora!)

here is the housewife-in-training and one of her maids making a pie crust....completely delicious but it ended up looking nothing like a pie....more like a pile of appley goodness :-)

as for my part, i was in charge of the jello mold...exciting! I, however, failed to read the directions (imagine that)....my mold was supposed to have a full hour of sitting out before dinner to "naturally loosen" from the mold (gross.)....i only gave it five minutes....so naturally the jello mold and I made our way into the bathroom...turned on the hair dryer...and I attempted to speed up the "natural loosening process".

apart from the food, we had a few more "50's style" touches around our kitchen...including these fun retro Coca Cola bottles-turned-bud-vases that I found in my parents basement....

our authentic 50's dinnerware was a family heirloom of sorts...belonging to my great grandmother, i believe.....so beautiful....

the table centerpiece is something i threw together...a vintage pitcher, pretty flowers, a sliced lemon to serve as vase filler....then I used a little set of vintage fiestaware teacups and saucers to hold more flowers.....

a close up of one of the fiestaware centerpieces.....love the colors...so retro :-)

here's my casserole and speed-dried jello mold....

and the star of the evening....meatloaf wellington....and ironically, the only vegetarian in the bunch volunteered to make it...that is her hand waving in the air trying to slice it for serving :-) i think she felt lucky that she didnt have to eat any of it!

and i think my jello mold deserves another close up :-)

and a pic of our homemade Caesar salad....we went a little overboard with the garlic....confusion over cloves vs. heads....what kind of housewives are we?!?!?

our beverages for the evening were none other than retro inspired Coca Cola's and Cherry Seagram's cocktails...

when dinner was over...the casseroles all put in the fridge....we pulled out this little recipe box i had made (remember this?) and played a little housewife-meets-bachelorette game.....

these fun recipe cards served as templates for recipes of our own sorts.....as a group, we came up with recipes that leigh might need her first year of marriage....a recipe for a steamy night at home (see below)....a romantic picnic....staying in touch with faraway friends once shes old and married...etc etc....

so that was our evening of 50's housewife training....and with a apple-pie-mound, blow-dried-jello-mold, and extreme-garlic-salad, i would say that perhaps it was better that we were all born in the 80's.....though perhaps our husbands still have something to fear :-)