Favorite Things Party!

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I'm pretty sure you have heard of Oprah's Favorite Things - in case you haven't it was an annual show she held where she revealed her favorite things from the past year & then gave everyone in the audience all of her favorite things.


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As a first event for the Real Housewives of the QC we decided to have a Favorite Things Party - a play on Oprah's but of course a MUCH SMALLER scale.

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1st step - sending out the invites:

'If you have seen Oprah's Favorite Things show you know what this is all about. Our 1st event is going to be a play on this - just a little smaller scale. ;) Start thinking of some of your favorite things that cost around $5.00. Bring 3 of the same item with you to the party. (Example - if Target is one of your favorite things you could bring three $5.00 gift cards.) This party is limited to the 1st 30 ladies to RSVP.  There is a limit of 30 because we have companies that are donating items so that every guest can go home with a Swag Bag. Can wait to get girls night off the ground! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next I started by checking out some of my friends 'Likes' on their Facebook pages to see what local companies & businesses are their favorites.  I then sent a letter to some of those companies and let them know about our idea for this event & asked them if they would like to contribute any items for the Swag Bags or give anything be raffled off.  It turned into an incredible blessing because A LOT more companies responded then I thought would & they were very excited about the idea & ready to give!
Check out everything that was in the Swag Bags!



The week before the party all of the donations were coming in
so it was time to get the bags & decorations ready.
(I made the FAVORITE THINGS banner with paint chips & cut out letters.)


Thank goodness for good friends - I needed quite a bit of help picking up all of the items.  Because the girls were such willing helpers/drivers I put together an extra little gift for them (it's always nice to know you're appreciated! - Thanks again Kendra, Niki, Amanda M, Tashiek, Leslie, Willette & Tami)




Willette was great helping get the tags together -
I didn't even need to look at them with one eye closed *wink*!
Some people had no idea what the tags meant so for those of you that don't know the tag had words from the Sound of Music...
*singing*"Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things..."

Two weeks before the party I ordered the bags from Oriental Trading Company, stuffed them with all of the goodies & put them on display!
Each bag had OVER $100 worth of items in them!  The girls also had choices with a few things.




When the ladies arrived they all put their Favorite Things they brought with them on the table.
We all talked, laughed, ate, drank & checked out the fun stuff everyone brought.

Leslie & Willette had on the same shirt, both had jeans, tall black boots & black & white belts!!!

After everyone arrived the girls got sticker tags (with "Some of our favorite things for some of our favorite girls" & their names on it) to stick on their bags so everyone knew which one was theirs.

The girls all wrote their names on 3 piece of paper & put them in 3 different bowls &
also received a raffle ticket.

Not all of the girls know each other so we went around the room & introduced ourselves & told/showed everyone what we brought & why it's one of our favorites.

After everyone said their piece, we pulled names out of the 1st bowl until every name was picked.  The ladies went up as their names were called to choose a new "favorite thing" off the table.  We did this a 2nd & 3rd time so that all the names were pulled in a different order & each girl got 3 new favorite things.

In between the table favorites we pulled the raffle tickets so each guest went home with a raffle item as well.
It kinda felt like Christmas!
...or at least until Tami won the purse that we were all drooling over...

Hope everyone had a great time - can't wait for the next one!