NOT GOING TO BRAZIL? HOST YOUR OWN WORLD CUP PARTY FOR FIFA 2014!

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I love any excuse to throw a party, and being a boy momma means that I don’t need to explain why I’m buying mini goal sets or covering my table in astroturf at this time of year.  I can just do it, and it’s acceptable, even to the mister.  I love it…and so when we were invited to host our own party for the #BigMatchPlanner event with #CollectiveBias, that’s exactly what we did.

What my boys love even more than the prospect of a party, (and that includes the mister) is that it’s the best time of the year for drinking Coca-Cola.  There’s something magical about the fun fizzy pop during football season, and having had their first taste of it in America last year, it’s been their favourite choice of bubbly beverage.  Striped straws and Coca-Cola.

My family have a hard time understanding why I theme everything and I’m not really sure where my love of doing just that stems from, but in my eyes, if you can have a theme to your party, you should.  After scouring many party supply sites I settled on items from three different ones, ordered and stalked the postman waited.  I compiled my list of World Cup Party Supplies on Pinterest here to save anyone wanting to throw a party the stress of hunting down the supplies themselves.

Party Decoration

My first thought was the decoration.  Everything on Pinterest was green, black and white and although it looked amazing, I wanted a little more fun and little more colour.  I took the three colours from the World Cup logo (red, green and yellow) and threaded that through.

Everything at our parties generally centres around the food tables as my family are pretty similar to the locusts in Bugs’ Life and tend to hover and then devour everything in sight.  So I like our tables to be fun and finger friendly.

I’ve never had an astroturf table cover surprisingly and so after much research, a man with a huge roll of pretend grass arrived at our door and delivered a huge piece for me.  Topped with a mini goal (which we used later for games), that set the backdrop for the table, along with flag bunting of the World Cup logo.   We had the party outside and draped the rest of the garden with international flag bunting, which most of our party spent the afternoon trying to identify the flags on and arguing over whether we should call it the Union Jack or Union Flag.

We ordered football tableware and little international flag picks for the food too, and a few more flags for good measure.

Party Food

Being outside as our house is so small as there were quite a few little ones around, we decided on easy to restock buffet food (luckily the rain stayed away).  Our lunchtime table was loaded with hot dogs and burgers, pulled pork made in the Crockpot (infused with Coca-Cola…SO good) buns, potato wedges and corn on the cob, salad and sausage rolls.  The little flag picks looked so sweet…I mean, manly, and sportsmanly-like, of course.

Our drink of choice was of course Coca-Cola and after witnessing eleven people going through 15 bottles of it (I hid one) in just over 6 hours, we were deeply appreciative of the fact that the kindly shop assistant in the supermarket where Every Little Matters went the extra mile to the store cupboard with our squeaky trolley to fill it up for us, before replenishing the shelves so that others too could benefit from the promotional 4 x 1.5l bottles for £4 offer.  Note the empty shelves below…we do love our Coca-Cola!

Our second table, hosting the dessert selection was chosen by our boys.  Half time oranges, freshly popped corn with cola bottle sweets in red buckets garnished with World Cup ribbon, and traditional Brazilian truffles which we hand made on the morning of the party with sprinkles to match the World Cup colours.  Our Little Adventurer was quite sure he could eat five of these and piled his plate high before anyone else got to the table.

Despite buying half of the Coca-Cola bottles in Tesco, we also bought some of the glass bottles (as I have a thing about them) and decorated them with silver referee whistles for the littles to play with.

Our final dessert was SO good (so I hear, gestational diabetes stopped me from trying them) and so much fun. Chocolate Coca-Cola cupcakes!  We decorated these with green grass frosting and little football rings for the littles to wear afterwards in a Mr. T like fashion along with their whistles.  I know I’ll regret the day I thought those whistles were cute very soon.

Although we all love our England boys, it’s no fun if there’s no competition in the house and so we decided to randomly allocate a team to each person.  Around the garden we posted inflated World Cup balloons with a difference.  Inside each balloon was a team flag and some football confetti.  When burst, “your” team was revealed.  There was plenty of cheating going on here, trying to peep through the latex balloons.  Strict allegiance to that team is expected, should any of our party be watching.  We know who you are.

We had a very embarrassing game of World Cup charades, and in the afternoon the littles enjoyed more games of their own whilst the big boys played keepy-up (at least that’s what I call it) and tried showing off their skills.  I have none, and even less than none with a huge belly.  Us ladies and the under 11s played World Cup skittles whereby little trophies were lined up as the skittles and mini footballs were bowled into them…and then subsequently stolen by the three under threes as treasure, who cried like Gazza when we tried to retrieve them.

By far the most replayed game all day of course, was mini football.  Grass roots level, quite literally, with little trophies again for the goal scorers.  Note that I did not score.

We can’t wait to get started with the World Cup…and if you’re celebrating this Summer, and need a little help with your preparations, Coca-Cola have launched a great site with plenty of ideas for your FIFA World Cup celebrations, including match information, to help you with your festivities!  We’d love to hear what you get up to!