movies and macarons (guys you can do this too!)

Sometimes brilliant ideas pop into my head – I’m not kidding.

Movies & Macarons was totally one of those great ideas I had to move on fast or else it would be just that – an idea, nothing more, nothing less and I’d have nada to show for it.

Here’s the timeline of one of the greatest ideas ever had…ahem, I should say one of the greatest excuses to spend time with ladies who make me smile uncontrollably. After you read this I’m expecting to hear all about your version of Movies & Macarons – guys this can be Movies and Man Food (I don’t know – just go with it!) or whatever you want, but the importance is to take a few hours to make the people you value, feel valued. They’ll love you for it – trust me!

Tuesday Afternoon: Text sent to roomie: Hey I have a great idea. Let’s do a movie & macarons night with some girls…You in? Beautiful! Look for the invite soon! 

Later Tuesday Afternoon: 15 minutes to design invite, click, invite has been emailed to a few girlfriends. (insert self hi-five here!)

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: Confirm attendees, finalize snack items with roomie, clean house, and wait.

Saturday: Game on!

So here’s how I did it on the cheap (you know I’m all about being fabulous on a budget). Buying macarons can get really expensive, really fast.  So I took myself to Trader Joes and bought a box of their frozen ones – can I just say these were delicious and only $4 for 24!  Add in chips, pretzels, chocolate, and a bottle of wine and I still didn’t spend over $35 on the entire night!

My roomie did homemade red velvet cupcakes and her famous chocolate chip cookies. Then I made a batch of chocolate covered pretzels. Guys for some reason people are impressed by these and they are SO easy to make.

1/2 block of Bakers semi sweet chocolate

melt chocolate over a double boiler

dip pretzels in melted chocolate and place on wax paper

put the pretzels in the freezer for 30 min

eat all of them

Because I have two girls for roomies we pulled out all of our chick flicks for every one to choose from and I placed my nail polish collection out on the table so we could all primp and paint during the movie.

The best part of the night was that the girls who came really didn’t know each other – as a matter of fact I didn’t even really know one of them! My twitter friend Jammie, moved to LA a few months ago and I invited her over so we could become what she calls “In Real Life Friends”. She fit right in, we loved hearing about her fashion blogger adventures,  she talked styling with my friend G and she and my roomie are even collaborating on a few projects now!

Oh yeah and we watched Wedding Crashers – well they did, I fell into a sugar coma and slept through most of it…

j.ayers