For my husband’s birthday a couple years ago, I planned a Ski Themed Party at the “Corkin Lodge”. He loves skiing, and because we couldn’t bring all of his friends onto the ski slopes, we invited them to a ski themed party. I came up with some fun ski themed party ideas for the food and decorations, so hopefully this gives you some inspiration for throwing your own ski themed party on a budget.
Invitations
We did not have time to send out printed-off invitations, but a cute idea would be to send out an invitation that resembles a ski pass. (We did another post–Ski Themed Party Part II–that has an invitation! Check it out by clicking here.)
Food
All of our food played off of skiing, ski lodges, or snow. In the kitchen, we served hot dogs and hot chocolate. On the snack table, we had little signs by the food to help people connect the food to the ski lingo they represented.
“Ski poles” were made from pretzel sticks, celery sticks, and carrot sticks.
“Snowballs” were powdered sugar donut holes.
“Pow-pow” was white cheddar popcorn. (Pow-pow is ski slang for “powder” which refers to fresh, powder snow that hasn’t been skied on yet.)
“Bunny Slope” cupcakes were made from carrot cake mix (get it… bunny and carrots?). I used white cream cheese frosting and coconut flakes to look like snow. And the bunny slope is the beginner hill which is represented on the slopes by a green circle, so I put green gummy rings (peach-o’s) on top.
“Intermediate” represents the middle level ski slopes and is represented by a blue square on ski signs. Therefore, I used white cake mix and added blue food coloring to make the cake blue. I frosted the cake with white cream cheese frosting and again added blue food coloring to make it blue. I then cut the cake into squares and placed squares of blue candy (cut up Airheads) on top of each.
The “Advanced” level is represented by a black diamond. Therefore, I made dark chocolate brownies, cut them into squares, and rotated them to look like a diamond.
“Pizzas” refer to the pizza wedge that skiers use to slow themselves down. This happens when skiers point their skies in a wedge shape that looks like a pizza, hence pizzas. We bought two large pizzas and cut the pieces into smaller triangular wedges.
See some additional ski-themed party food by clicking here.
Decorations
Because we were already buying food for the party, I wanted to keep the decorations low-cost. We accomplished this by using ski gear my husband already had, things from around the house to make it feel like a ski lodge, and inexpensive decorating materials.
I found a big roll of Scotch brand brown paper for a couple dollars at a local grocery store to make all of my signs. We had a sign on the front door that said, “Corkin Ski Lodge.”
In one corner of the living room we had a “ski lodge lounge” set up with chairs, natural colored throw blankets, candles, white Christmas lights, fur pillows, fur slippers, a basket of blankets, etc. Because we didn’t have a real fireplace, we used a laptop to play a fireplace video on YouTube that played for over 3 hours. It was hard to capture this corner in a picture, but the lighting was really cool and made a soft, warm, lodge-like environment. We turned the lights off in the whole living room so that we could get warm light coming from all of our candles and white Christmas lights.
In the opposite corner of the living room we made a snow corner. This corner had the snack table and another table that held another laptop that played ski YouTube videos and music. I put white plastic tablecloths on these tables and then covered them in “snow”…white, silver, and blue confetti and white cotton balls and candles. From the ceiling I hung cut out snowflakes and hung white icicle Christmas lights. And, of course, I threw in my husband’s skis and one of his ski boots.
We turned the couch into “The Chair Lift” and draped the back of the couch with white Christmas lights. From the ceiling we hung paper snowflakes.
Above the entrance to our kitchen we hung a sign that said “The Alpine Grille”… that sounds like a name you would find on any ski lodge grill/restaurant right?
Our ski themed party was so fun! Our friends and family loved the decorations and food. It was a complete success! I had a blast making the party cute and incorporating the theme, and my husband got a manly themed party. Win-win!
*****Check out our Ski Themed Party Ideas–Part 2 by clicking here!*****
