The Murder Mystery Partay!

If I haven't revealed this already, I love hosting parties (well I guess I just love parties in general) and this one was really fun for me. As I mentioned before, we hosted a New Year's Eve party last Friday and it was a Mardi Gras themed murder mystery dinner party (say that 10 times fast...). I had bought the kit for my friend Kelly's birthday last year and we finally got around to using it for this event.

Here's a picture of the house decked out for the event. We bought plenty of Mardi Gras beads and masks for everyone.

The kit was great in my opinion; it included a party planning guide to explain how to structure the night's events, recipes, decorating ideas and costume ideas for each character. The kit also had a "police report", clues, name tags and a character booklet for each person. Everybody dressed up as their character and really got into it so that made it much more fun.

Here's my sister McKenna and I. I was Elise St. Gresch, the maid and she was Connika Gothika, the eccentric novelist from next door.

 Out of the recipes included with the booklet, we made 2 of them. The garlic bread on the left and the jambalaya on the right. As the jambalaya included meat I didn't have any, but everyone else said it was really good.

We made this vegetarian gumbo for myself and I loved it. It was spicy enough to give it flavor, but not too spicy and all the vegetables were really tasty. It made a TON though, so if I were to do it again, I would definitely halve the recipe.

This is the beginnings of a King Cake, a Mardi Gras must in my opinion... ;-)

A few of us decked out in our masks! From left to right, Melissa DuPre - the wife, Alexis DuPre - the daughter, the maid, Cayenne Pepper - the chef and Bourbon DuPre - the jazz musician

The completed King Cake. It doesn't look like much, but we made it with a lot of love and it tasted great anyway. =]

 Here I am with Stephen J. Peek - the attorney and Bourbon.

I don't want to give it all away in case anyone decides to play the game themself, but it was definitely a lot of fun trying to solve the mystery and getting all into character and everything. We also played New Orleans jazz music the whole time and having the Mardi Gras themed food certainly helped us get into character.

Happy New Year!

Hope your New Years was fun too! =]