Super Bowl - Throwback Thursday

This is a throwback to the first Super Bowl that broke my heart.  I am a Peyton Manning fan & this year, my husband & I took a trip to NYC to see Peyton & the Broncos play the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.  We were engaged in NYC back in 2008 & thought that going back to celebrate an early 5 year anniversary, an early babymoon & a really early 30th birthday for me would be a great idea.  So we pulled out the trusty credit card with 0% interest for a year & away we went.  What a nightmare.  It went terrible.  The trip was great, the experience was great, the game was just awful.  To top it off, we got snowed in at the airport & had to sleep there.  Ugh.  But this post isn't about this past Super Bowl, it's about Super Bowl XLIV from 2010.  Peyton was still with the Colts then & they were playing the Saints.  I was having my first big Super Bowl party at our old house.  I spent what felt like forever cutting out horseshoes & fleur de lis.  Let me tell you, there are few things that are more of a pain to cut out than fleur de lis.  I traced tons of them from a template I found online which was fine, but they have so many edges that it took quite a while to cut them out.  I cut the horseshoes out in Colts colors of silver & blue & I cut the fleur de lis out in Saints colors of black & gold.  I then went a little glitter crazy.  I covered all of the shapes in Elmer's adhesive spray & then glittered like crazy.  I alternated the colored shapes with footballs & tied them onto streamers & strung them across our den.  My horseshoes didn't want to stand up straight...which was probably a little foreshadowing of what was to come.

 

I set up all of the food in the dining room.  I divided the dining room table into two sides...the blue/silver side for the Colts & the black/gold side for the Saints. 

 This was when I was just getting started in my obsession with theme parties, so it was a work in progress.  I did, however, try & give the food clever names & make them either football or team related.  Here is the food that was on the Saints side.

 

Most of this food was super easy.  The "Spicy Saints Salsa" was delicious salsa from Publix.  The "French Quarter Footballs" was just dough cut into football shapes & topped with pizza sauce & mozzarella cheese.  The football cake was also picked up from Publix.  The "Cajun Cheeseball" is my usual cheeseball recipe that you can find here, shaped into a football shape.  To make it a little more spicy, I added in some cayenne pepper into the cheeseball mix.  The lines in the football, which got a little messy, were just pieces of cream cheese that I had stuck in the freezer for a few minutes to try & get them to harden into that shape.  Keeping the chili powder off of the clean white stripes was pretty impossible. 

 

Now for the Colts side of the table...

The top picture is missing the "Colts Bacon Crescents" for some reason, but for a lot of these parties, I just take the pictures when I can because there is always so much cooking & last minute decorating & greeting going on.  I need to focus more on taking some decent pics, but back in 2010, I never even considered I would be posting these pics to a blog.  : )

 

So on the Colts side...the "Super Bowl Sausage Dip"...this is so easy & probably every single one of you has made it before.  It is your basic Velveeta Spicy Sausage Dip, recipe can be found here.  The only change I made is that I typically don't ever have Rotel around, but will have jars of salsa.  I just used the salsa instead of the Rotel & I think it tastes just as delicious.  We do use the "hot sausage" to make the dip & it is DELICIOUS.  This is pretty much a staple for any tailgate/football party. 

 

The "Colts Bacon Crescents" is also one of my favorite recipes for tailgate, parties, breakfast, Saturday, really whatever.  When bacon & cream cheese is involved, you really can't go wrong.  Here is the recipe from Kraft.  I pretty much always double the recipe because this is the first thing that gets gone at parties.  Everyone loves them.  It was definitely the same at the Super Bowl party.  It was the most action from the "Colts" all night. : )

 

The "Manning MVP Meatballs" are my standard meatball recipe that you can find here.  These are also pretty popular & very delicious.  In the middle of the table, I just had cookies that were supposed to be football shaped with either blue or black sprinkles for each of the teams.  Full disclosure, they kinda baked like regular cookies & not footballs, but what are you gonna do? 

 

For decorations, I used tablecloths, party picks, the paper football,  & confetti from Party City.  I had the black & gold plates/napkins/silverware from a previous Casino party & picked up the rest from the Dollar Tree.  The Dollar Tree has amazing prices on tablecloths & plates & napkins & stuff, if they have the color you are looking for.  Their colors are pretty basic, although around New Years, they do bring in the gold & silver, which is great to snag & hang on to.  For the two boxes saying "Saints" & "Colts", I took two boxes that I had around the house, I think they were cereal boxes or something, & I covered them in some foil paper I had leftover from Christmas gift bags.  Then I just glued on my construction paper cutouts & I was done. 

 

The party turned out great, if only the game had.  Sadly, Peyton & the Colts wound up losing.  But at least we had an awesome party with awesome friends to distract me from my sadness.  Maybe one day Peyton can win a Super Bowl again.  Fingers crossed.