Home of the Brit: The Long Awaited Narnia Party

Ok. So it wasn't long-awaited for the guests as they knew nothing about it until this month. But it was long-awaited for me. Be warned, this will be a long post!

Rewind to November 2007. My Mum & I were sitting on my living room couch enjoying a nice hot cup of tea (as we often do!). I believe I had just had a Christmas party at my house (or was just about to, can't quite recall) and we started discuss the fun concept of theme parties. As The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was such a hit we came up with the idea of a NARNIA party. Well as many of you know, tea gets the creative juices flowing and before long we had a string-load of ideas as to how we could make this work. The plan was to throw it in January of 2008 (so as not to interfere with Christmas too much) but the month got away from me before you knew it and February seemed too occupied with Valentine's Day etc., and not so wintery.

Now fast forward to November 2008. Again, not wanting it close to Christmas but January 09 looked good. So, this past Saturday 44 people (12 of whom were children) entered the wardrobe into the wonderful winter-wonderland of Narnia.

Costumes were optional but as I hope you will soon find out, in abundance! I turned my outside house lights off and instead had a lit lamppost that I had borrowed, outside of my front door. I had also covered the base of it with some 'snow'. Upon entering the front door (where the interior entrance lights were off) guests could hear the soundtrack to the movie which I downloaded and had playing in the entrance. Immediately in front of them were the 'fur coats' that they had to separate and walk through in order to get into Narnia. In reality I had hung a shower curtain rod in my ceiling skylight and hung two fur-blankets down from it. It was fantastic! I was thrilled with how it turned out.

Once in Narnia everything was white with winter! I covered all of my coloured living room couches with white sheets (thank you Kelly & Sherisse!) and all of my tables with white tablecloths. I also strung snowflakes in a line across the middle of the living room (above our heads) and there were sparkly white beads hanging everywhere on lamps, pictures and chandeliers. In the kitchen, again on a white tablecloth was a table full of.....white food! If you've never before seen a full table of only white food, it is honestly not that appetizing-looking. I think God invented colour so we would eat better. However, it was yummy! As Yvonne pointed out - surprisingly yummy! And you do have to rack your brains to come up with enough white food items to keep everyone full.

There was white cheese & cracker plates, white cheeseballs, white chips, pita bread with tzaziki, white triangle sandwiches with cucumber and cream cheese, devilled eggs, a veggie plate of only cauliflower and mushrooms with ranch dip, white pastries with various fillings, and a clear punch to drink.

In the dining room was the dessert table - a white chocolate fountain (yum!) with apple slices, bananas, cream puffs, shortbread, honeydew melon and powdered doughnuts. All very wintery and icy looking.

And the costumes were fantastic! I went as the Snow Queen - or White Witch. Darrell was the professor, Brooklyn was Lucy and Zachary was a centaur. I am rather proud of his costume as I made the entire thing from things found in the house! We even had a costume vote - you could vote once for the best child costume and once for the best adult costume. Luke won the adult prize for his brilliant Mr. Tumnus and Zachary won for the centaur. To be fair though (in case anyone's calling foul play....) you were not allowed to vote for your spouse or children. Following that we had a very quick 'fashion show' of the top 10 voted costumes. Each had to walk the 'stage' to a Hannah Montana song. (I know, nothing to do with Narnia but the easiest dance number I could find......)

So many people were creative - I believe we had 5 Lucy's, 3 Susan's, 2 professors, 2 Mrs. Mcready's, 3 Aslan's, 2 Peter's, 1 Edmund, 1 Lamppost (BRILLIANT!), 1 Dwarf Guard, 1 Mr. Tumnus, 2 Mermaids, 3 White Witches, and one Piece of Turkish Delight played by my dear friend Jeni whose baby is about to pop out any minute!!! I know I'm missing some but you get the general idea.

And to add the icing to the cake, my sister, brother-in-law and 2 nephews were able to be there from Kelowna! They came to Vic. for only 36 hours but made the most of the whirlwind visit to Narnia.

So - to all my friends who arrived with glorious outfits and festive faces - thanks for the memories. Here are the photos I have so far - hopefully the others who took a gazillion will send me some soon that I can add to the pile.