A few weekends ago, we threw a Drive In Diner party for a friend of ours, Jeff. It was thrown together relatively fast & on a tight budget (ofcourse ;p).
If you want to see part 1, click here. You’ll have to check out my homemade Route 66 french fry pouches. You can make them too. They’re super easy.
This party was going to be simple (HA!) so I wasn’t really thinking about favors. That is…until I saw these cute vintage Glee gum packs on sale at Cost Plus World Market. Thus…the Doggie Bag came to be…
The cute polka-dotted bags are from Pick Your Plum. I got them a long time ago for $5 for 50 bags. That’s $0.10/bag…not bad. I had some sugar cookie dough from a failed Parties for Pennies experiment & an ice cream cone cookie cutter I bought from Goodwill for about $0.10. I was planning on icing the cookies but realized I had a few pink chocolate melts in the cabinet. That was much easier to just melt & dip. The diner pad I found at Party City for $1. The doggie bag label I made was done in Publisher. All in all, the “Doggie Bag Favors” were just under $2 each.
For drinks, we served Mexican cokes from Costco. I picked up these red straws in the dollar bin at Michaels one day & thought they’d be perfect. The only problem is that once you put the straw in the coke, it sank down to the bottom below the bottle opening. I took some old coke bottle tops we had, hammered a hole through the top with a nail & inserted the straw. The straw stayed above the sink line & we had some cute straw decorations.
These were part of the inside table set-up. The vintage napkin holder on the left side I found at Goodwill & painted a pretty teal color. The mini cupcakes were cupcakes I had frozen from the Bomb Cupcake Pops. I just iced them & topped with a red jelly belly.
The pretty ice cream cake…
The failed ice cream cake…
This was a sad, sad attempt. I saw on Pinterest an ice cream cake made by making brownies in 2 round cake pans & spreading the ice cream in between. I couldn’t get the ice cream to get soft enough to spread but still frozen enough to not melt. The website with the instructions…well…didn’t have many instructions. I still attempted to fix the ice cream cake but when I did, it split in half! UGH! I just took it out to show people but everyone wanted a slice & my epic fail was devoured in minutes. Guess that goes to show…”don’t judge a book cake by it’s cover cracks.”
I thought I’d give you a breakdown of the Drive In Diner table set up & $$!
1. Drive In Sign
Cost: $0
I already had the white posterboard & acrylic paint. I drew the sign freehand off an inspiration picture I found on Google images. I then took an exacto knife & cut a cross shape for the lights. The lights are just an old outdoor strand we had. I attached them on the back with some tape.
2. Broccoli Slaw
Cost: $2.50 (plus cost of the food which was only $4)
The red tray came from Target for $1.99 & the cute red containers were also from Pick Your Plum. The license plate menu card was something I designed on Publisher.
3. Record Player Servers
Cost: $3
The records are from Goodwill. I had two of them & had to get one more. They were all about $1 each. The cubes underneath them are just old boxes covered in wrapping paper I got for $0.99.
4. Route 66 French Fries
Cost: $2
The only cost here is the $1.99 tray I got from Target. The french fry packs I made from parchment paper. I cut the parchment paper to the size of printer paper & taped it to a piece of cardstock paper (printer paper size). I found a Route 66 map online & then printed it to the parchment paper. I just cute one piece in half, folded it in half & glued the sides together, leaving one end open.
5. Burger/Hot Dog baskets
Cost: $5 (for all)
I got the burger baskets from the Target dollar bin (give a little woot woot if you can’t go into Target without checking out the dollar bin!). They were $1 for 4 baskets! The polka-dotted paper in it was a $0.99 pack of tissue paper I cut to fit.
What great finds have you found in the Target dollar bin??
Hope you’re having a great week! Heads up for next week…I’m gonna share a Secret Garden Baby Shower I did last weekend. It involved a construction project & endangering people’s lives! Sound thrilling?? Stay tuned!
p.s. You can now LIKE Parties for Pennies on facebook! Click here.
Linking To:
SerenityNow Blog
Oh no, Sorry about your pinterest fail! that sucks to work so hard and have it get ruined. I make these cakes all the time but see here’s my trick. After you bake the brownie (I use cake) layers, take the cake pan, line it with lots of plastic wrap and spread the softened ice cream in there. Put the cake pan in the freezer and re-freeze. Make sure you don’t press too hard when you put the plastic wrap over the top of it, though, because the wrap will freeze into the ice cream and you can’t easily get the wrap out of the ice cream. After about 8 hours or overnight, just before serving, take the pan and layer the brownies. It also helps if you freeze the brownies. They won’t be solid. But they will be cold enough to not immediately melt the ice cream. Good luck! try it again because it’s delicious! I also mix candy into my ice cream in a bowl before I put it into the cake pan to freeze it. I find that the exact time it takes me to get the ice cream home from the grocery store is perfect to soften it enough for spreading.
OHHHH Melissa! Thank you for sharing that! Do you have a blog?? That is such a helpful tip! Thank you so much!! If you have a blog & have done this before, let me know the link & I’ll share it with my readers. Thanks again. That is soo helpful! Have a confetti-filled week! <3 Heidi Rew
Hi Heidi! I love this party idea!! You did a wonderful job! Where did you find the mini cups for the broccoli slaw?
Thanks La’Toya! I got the polka-dot cups from Pick Your Plum. PYP is one of those sites that post deals each day, so those are no longer available, but I found some on Amazon that are just like them – http://amzn.to/1KWAxPa. Hope that helps! Thanks again! Party on, friend! <3 Heidi
You’re welcome!! Thanks so much for the quick response!! I am planning a birthday party for my hubby this Sunday. I am completely last minute in that I started 2 weeks ago. These cups are so cute!! Thank you!