Pink Papaya Party!

A friend from church is putting a lifetime of retail cosmetics industry experience to work for herself and she has found a wonderful company to collaborate with. Pink Papaya is a skin care, spa products, and make up line that uses natural botanical, does not test on animals, and gives back to deserving causes. I hosted a get together the other day to introduce friends to the products and to my friend. If you want to see their product line, click this link to go to my friend's page on the Pink Papaya website. I was able to use a lot of the pink decorations that I have been accumulating for Lydia's Four and Fabulous birthday party in June.

Here is the spread I laid out for the guests.  This was a REALLY busy stressful week at work and I had ZERO time to do much ahead of time.  I went grocery shopping the day before the party.  I only made one food item ahead of time (the cheese ball had to firm up over night).  Everything else you see was done in about an hour before the party.

  I was REALLY happy with how it came together.  I cut a few vegetables and set out some ranch dressing.  We had chips and a few store bought dips.  One of my favorite semi-homemade party foods is the small baked brie in the center right of the table.  Just place a brie round on a pre-made pie crust, smother the top of the brie with jam, wrap in the crust and bake until the crust is cooked.  You will want to either place it in a walled pan to bake, or use aluminum foil to support the sides, so it doesn't collapse as the cheese melts.  Let it cool until it holds itself up and PRESTO!

I made two fruit plates featuring, what else, PAPAYA!

I had hoped to bake some pink cookies, but settled for store bought color themed treats.  We had white chocolate pretzels, pink sugar wafers, an Little Debbie strawberry cakes sliced into pinwheels.

And then there was the "Spa Party Cheese Plate"!  I saw this on Pinterest and then found the full directions and recipe on Hungry Happenings.  I was THRILLED with how easy it was.  I mixed 2 boxes of cream cheese with 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese.  I added a little salsa for color and a little seasoning ( 1 Tbsp taco is recommended, but I only had a random spice blend) for taste. The Pinterest version had you mix it up and place it in a face mold to set up over night.  If I don't have one of those laying around the house, who does?  So I improvised with some aluminum foil.  The cheese was nice and thick so I just formed an oval blob in the foil and left it overnight in the refrigerator.

The biggest issue was my face did not have a nose or any modeling, it was just a flat oval.  After it set up. I used a spoon to scoop some of the cheese out of the eye socket area.  I added that cheese to the nose area.

Cucumbers cover the missing eyeballs and a knife made the nostril holes.

A red bell pepper. cut so that the segmentation made the indent in the center. was used for the lips.  The headband/towel was supposed to be made from cheese, but I forgot to buy the right kind.  I just used a paper towel.  The original version also had a mud mask of guacamole.  I intended to do that, but the skin color came out so nice, I didn't bother and just served the guacamole with chips instead.  For comparison, here is the original inspiration image,

and here is my finished cheese ball make over face.