Adventure 10

The Night Cirucs by Erin Morgenstern is probably one of the most enchanting books that I have ever read. After reading it about two years ago I wanted to do some kind of Night Circus themed party. Then a friend of mine started a book club and she had read the Night Circus too. We discussed doing The Night Circus for one of the months in book club. A whole year went by and I decided to do it, décor and all.  I spoke a little bit about it in Adventure 5. The book is full of wonderful ideas to make it all come alive but so is pinterest. I came across this pin for playing card garland. we happen to have a ton of playing cards that we don't use (these round ones being one set) so i taped them to some red and white bakers twine and hung them behind the food table.

Crepe paper in black and white was a dream.

 there were two other book clubs, Delicious Reads and Things I Love, that i kept coming across on pinterest that inspired quite a bit of our book club.

 

 

after reading through the book a second time I kept thinking that we needed to have a fire pit like in the book. we had a black plastic caldron from Halloween and some wood and Christmas lights and I was able to make a fire to keep the circus alive.

 

 

if you look closely there is even a book at the bottom of it just like Marco put in his fire to keep connected to the circus. I came across these two pins that helped inspire my little pretend fire.

Here and Here.

 

 once you walked into the door you encountered the Fortune Teller's tent where you could pick up your fortune (in the form of a paper cookie.)

i saw this and this and this pin that helped me make them a bit.

 

this was my den and where the conversation about the book took place. (the main circus tent)

 

along with the Fortune teller's tent you could stop at the Bedtime Stories tent where you could open bottles and jars that may take to different places. 

before walking into my kitchen you encountered The Wishing Tree

 not all of the ladies made new wished ignited by old ones but some of them did

 

once in the kitchen you got to be in The ice garden, where there was rock candy and ice water.

 

 

here is the main food table. I knew that Chocolate mice was going to for sure be on the menu, as well as popcorn and some sort of caramel dipping sauce.

I attempted to make mini caramel apples, (scooping apples out with a fruit baller) that was difficult to do, I wasn't getting round balls and then I dipped them in the caramel and put them in mini cupcake liners. peeling the liner away from the caramel was difficult and the paper stuck to the bottom of the apples/caramel.

I purchased the popcorn containers at hobby lobby.

 

cups were a no brainer, I used the mason jars that I had on hand and the black and white paper straws that I already had as well.

the punch was equal parts, apple juice, cranberry juice and ginger ale (which was a big hit)

 

I had hoped that the chocolate mice would come out  looking more like these.

they were not very easy to make but my husband assured me that they did, indeed look like mice and while they weren't as pretty as the ones in the link they sure were good.

I used yellow cake mix and vanilla frosting and the milk chocolate candy melts.

the tails were the pull apart twizzlers and some of the mice have the almond slivers for ears.

 

chocolate mice were getting difficult to make so I made a few cake balls to put out which were quite a bit easier but still difficult. (I should add at this point that this was my second attempt to make cake balls. the first one was a complete fail I didn't even get to the chocolate dipping part.)



 

and then, the book club could not be a book club without these ladies.

the Reveurs

if you saw my earlier post about the circus being canceled because of the weather (this was a rescheduled event) there were about five or six other ladies that would have been here if not for the crazy March weather we were having. I am grateful for these ladies that were still able to make it even though we had to reschedule. it was a lot of fun.