Guys & Dolls Cast Gift Ideas

This was the 11th  Spring musical our family has been involved with at the high school!  I’m not sure what I am going to do with myself when Tessa graduates from high school next year!

I have put together a lot of flower bouquets during that time.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, flowers can get a little old after a while so it’s fun to come up with something different.

Candy bouquets make a great gift.

And even a Candy Bar Cake is a great idea.

I am always on the lookout for a new, fun idea.

One night, after one of the performances, I spotted this!

How cute is that?  A flower bouquet made out of playing cards, dice and dollar bills.  The perfect flower bouquet for Big Julie (he’s a really big gambler in the show – I mean really big!!!)  I had to stop him and ask if I could take a picture. Found out that my creative friend Laurie made it for him!  Way to go Laurie.

I decided I wanted to do a little something for all the members of the cast.  Forgetting that it was a rather large cast (50 kids) I decided to make dice shaped cookies for everyone.

It turned into a little bigger project than I anticipated but they did turn out so cute!!
My kitchen table looked like this for several days!

I also made cookies shaped like hearts, diamonds, spades, clovers and some lips for the Hot Box Dolls.  I wrapped two cookies in a cellophane bag and then attached a little card.  I used playing cards for the backing.

We had given Tessa flowers the previous weekend after the show so for closing night I wanted to do something a little different.

I decided to try my hand at a cookie bouquet for the first time.  I learned quite a few things through the process and decided I needed to take an icing lesson from my friend Dawn next time she makes her amazing shortbread cookies but I think it turned out pretty good for my first try.  I made one for Tessa and one for the shows director.

I’ll do a separate post to give you a little more detail on how I put it together etc.  Stay tuned!

I helped the kids put gifts together for all the adults involved in the play – music director, choreographer, orchestra conductor, set designer etc. too.  They received their gifts in these cute white gift bags that I turned into dice!

Hope this post got your creative juices flowing!  Stay tuned for more info on the cookie bouquet!!

Guys & Dolls Cast Party Menu

Thank you to all who have emailed wondering where the photos are from the cast party I worked on last weekend!  I’ve been playing catch up the last few days and trying to get caught back up on my sleep.  Staying up until 2:00 a.m. in the morning and then losing an hour of sleep due to daylight savings time can slow an old lady like me down just a bit!!

The cast party was a great success thanks to the help of a lot of parents!

We had a yummy menu, not the typical pizza or sub sandwich fare!

There were lettuce wraps, curry, El Cafe Cubano beans (if you’ve seen Guys & Dolls, you’ll understand that one).  Both the curry and the beans were vegan as we have several kids in the cast that are vegan.  There was also some sweet pork and rice and three types of pinwheel sandwiches.   In addition we had chips and salsa, 7 layer dip and a very spicy but yummy jalapeno dip, fruit and vegetable trays!  No one went home hungry!!

For those of you unfamiliar with the show Guys & Dolls  – it takes place in the 1930’s in New York and deals with a group of missionaries trying to save a group of gamblers/crapshooters.  Of course at the end everyone falls in love, gets married and lives happily ever after!

It was fun to use the theme of the show in planning the party.

There is a trip down to Havana in the show to El Cafe Cubano  and there is lots of dice throwing  and gambling going on in the show.

For dessert there were lots of fun things!

Thanks to Cindy who hand dipped all these amazing strawberries.  The little tuxedo and wedding veil strawberries were a huge hit (the show ends with a wedding) – aren’t they darling!

Another mom made up a batch of “dice” krispie treats.

I baked up a batch of yummy chocolate/caramel cupcakes with a whip cream frosting.  I couldn’t resist when I found these fun cupcake toppers at the cake decorating shop!  They even had sprinkles shaped like hearts, spades, diamonds etc.!

And then there was this amazing cake made by one of the mom’s – Caryn Ogle.  She used the logo from the poster for the show and created two mini cakes shaped like dice!  Isn’t it great!

Here are the happy couples cutting the cake!

For dessert there was also apple strudel to go along with the reference to cheesecake and strudel in the show!

I love developing a theme for a party.  It was so fun to have the other mom’s join in with me with their amazing creativity to help create a really fun event for the kids that had worked so hard and so long on the show.

Would you like help in developing a theme for your next party? I’d love to help you.  Please check out my services page to see what I have available.

Later this week I’ll share some ideas I came up with for gifts for the performers.