hey there today I am sharing how to have a National Lampoon's Christmas vacation
party like a Griswold family. 2019 is a 30th anniversary of National Lampoon's
Christmas vacation movie so I'm going to share food, decorations, game prize ideas
and some game and costume ideas as well as what we did when we had our Christmas
vacation party last year at our house with 50 of our friends. I'm also going to
share what I would not do if I was having a 30th anniversary party this
year I will link the wording of our invitation that we emailed out to
everybody as well as a parting gift note about friendship that is super sweet
down below .but the invitation says National Lampoon's Christmas vacation
costume party join us for the HAP HAP happiest Christmas party we will have
costume prizes game prizes and other prizes and some that keep on giving
throughout the entire year and we had we told them that we were having brisket
and beans from our local Rudy's barbecue restaurant and we also told them to wear
a costume and to bring their favorite Christmas time dessert as far as
National Lampoon's Christmas vacation party food goes we recommend a little
bowl of white chocolates or white Mentos that are going to be the tylenol that
Clark asks for at the end of the movie when he loses it because of his boss and
so we had a bowl of that with a little Sun and I just recommend that you find
some pictures on the internet we also just bought bags of Chex Mix and put
those in a bowl and then had a little Sun in it saying snots puppy chow nobody
ate that and nobody ate the white chocolates that we had from M&Ms and by
the way I will link everything that I talked about down below in the
description box most of it is from Amazon and the like and we also knew
that one of our friends was coming as aunt Bethany and she was making her own
jello mold you can just use green jello and add Cheerios to it to look like the
cat food from the Christmas vacation movie
and surprisingly half of it was gone by the end of the party so don't use real
cat food I did get a lot of inspiration for our creativity around our house for
this party from Pinterest and I have a Pinterest page Lorri pop ideas that pop
and the board is Griswald party ideas if you just search that you'll see all the
ones that I saved but we do have some ideas that we made on our own that I
want to share with you it's so much fun people get really into this designing a
costume and bringing food ok we had 50 people come to this party every person
we send an invitation to was able to come and this is our first one but
here's what we've thought or found out about the food we ordered way too much
barbecue the restaurant told us for 50 people you need this much barbecue and
about half of it was eaten that we had bought the little chafing dishes and the
burners on Amazon I'll link those below then we also recommend just having all
of the meat on the table because you're going to forget it because you're
hosting the party and having games and then we had three quarts of beans and
they were all gone by the end of the party we served ice tea sangria and beer
none of the beer was taken pretty much and the sangria was taken and then iced
tea we had 35 water bottles for 50 people and only 17 were taken if you
host your National Lampoon's Christmas vacation party at the very beginning of
December it's right when everybody is getting in the Christmas spirit and they
want to make something Christmassy or a dessert so ask people to bring food so
that the pressure is off of you and you can just relax during the party as far
as National Lampoon's Christmas vacation decorations go my husband decorated the
outside of the house he wanted everyone to think that our house looked like the
chubby chaser and he bought Christmas lights in the shape of grids so they
were like a net of Christmas lights when they arrived at your house they are all
rolled up so you need to let them settle in and we suggest hanging them from
nails in your garage so that they can straighten out so that
when you do nail them to your house they will hang straight down and not roll up
on you and then we connected those lights are those Nets of lights with zip
ties and then we also set up a six-foot ladder and then tore off the sleeve of a
plaid shirt my husband bought a brand new plaid shirt and tore off the sleeve
and stapled it to the gutter or whatever and then the night of the party we had a
spotlight on it lots of extension cords are needed for all these lights
I saw a party wreath lined or wrapped in extension cords and it was so cute I
think it was from a construction birthday party but I tried and I just
could not make it work so I just printed out a Sun with the green station wagon
Griswald family tree Mele Kalikimaka welcome and I just taped that piece of
paper to a little cheap wreath or a wreath that I already had as a welcoming
Sun on our front door the hardest thing to find was an RV big Sun I wanted
floor-to-ceiling plastic wrap or something that was decorated like an RV
for a photo booth section we could not find that but my husband wanted a year
before this party he knew he wanted to rent an RV and so how we recommend doing
that is looking for a local rental of an RV and say you just want it for one
night you don't want to get inside it they can just park it in your driveway
or wherever we wanted it to be dirtied up but it came clean it's everything but
the people who were who delivered our RV they were so fascinated with this idea
they loved it you know and we sent them pictures and then we also found at Home
Depot that I'll link below an inflatable Griswold Christmas tree on top of the
car I thought it was going to be huge and you can see that we're a little
bigger than that and then I also cut out a black piece of card stock in the shape
of a flat cat who got electrocuted by the Christmas tree and I just stretched
cotton balls over that and just put it on the side of one of the rooms
on the floor for people to see when people walked through the front door we
had a Christmas tablecloth color over a table and with a little picture frame I
printed out a colored Sun said write your character name and your name on
your nametag and then I had markers and I had just labels like this size labels
for people to write that information on we bought a zip file of Clark Griswold
National Lampoon's Christmas vacation decoration for photo booth props on Etsy
and I suggest you just buy one and then what we did is we printed them out at
FedEx Kinkos remember that you're going to have to cut most of them out and only
two people out of the 50 people who came use those photo props you can have some
there but remember you're going to have to cut them out and put them on a dowel
rod as well and we just use two pieces of masking tape to help secure it but
what I also did was I used some of them because I was so tired of cutting I just
put those on my kitchen cabinets and wherever the main party is going to take
place the number one item you need to get if you are having a National
Lampoon's Christmas party is the Clark Griswold cutout it is easy to use it's
from Amazon you just flap this piece of cardboard over and it stands up securely
no problem whatsoever our cat was petrified of it some of the costume
ideas were so clever Uncle Eddie's wife Catherine is spot on one of the easiest
things to do wear a few shades of brown and then cut a little curly green ribbon
and just pin it in your hair my friend Janine had the attic scene where Clark
is looking at all the old video footage and she found her aqua turban on Amazon
I'll link that below and just a little mink stole I think they're called and
did the white people loves her awesome and her husband was the best uncle Eddie
in the bathrobe scene he showed up and I mean we did not want him to sit
that road was so short so a tip for that costume is to buy and woman's size but
anyway you bring a six-pack of old Miller Lite or Miller life beer just the
old classic looking huh larious I wanted to be a moose mug so I just cut out
posterboard ears and then I had to use the poster board because it was so stiff
to make a band to fit it around my head and then I
bought this shirt on Amazon with the moose mug on it that they're drinking
the eggnog out of at the end of the party my husband got his light blue
Uncle Eddie outfit on Amazon and my friend Michelle bucked long sleeve and
long pants floral pajamas and then that nice long robe and it's right when Clark
first calls everyone out of the house and says come look look everybody and
then the lights don't work and then if you want to do the whole flannel sleeve
staple to the house scene you could wear a flannel shirt with the sleeve cut off
blue vest and then carry a staple gun or wear those little construction gloves
all that kind of thing you can also dress like Audrey and just wear 80s
themes one of our friends was the electrocuted cat and that is one of the
simplest costumes to pull off a black t-shirt and then glue or staple on
cotton in the shape of a flat white cat if you're gonna dress like Uncle Eddie
drinking the eggnog I suggest you buy a cheap turtleneck and then cut out it so
it looks like that Dickie underneath the white sweater the really thin white
sweater that was a great idea and then you can also get these glass and moose
mugs to drink out of so you can come to the party holding that with some ice tea
in it or something coffee whatever and the winners of our costume party we're
Clark's lost wearing his blue plaid pajamas they got it at Walmart I think
and then the red bow tied around it and the wife and wearing all of her garb for
going to bed now we are in Houston and it was so hot for these people trying to
dress up like it's winter outside in Chicago okay some game ideas for your
National Lampoon's Christmas vacation aarti are number one line up an ABC
order of your favorite Christmas movie now at the beginning of a party people
tend to group themselves near people they knew or know and we wanted
everybody to mingle a little bit so when you line them up in ABC order spouses
are separated and you're standing now near people that you might not know and
that's the first game then we tell them about the food we have and then we start
the trivia game I will link where we got a lot of our trivia questions below in
the description box some of the trivia game questions were what is the most
popular jelly company how many lights did Clark Griswold use on the house
what's the name of the dog which jelly of the month goes well with peanut
butter another game that we had which ended up kind of being boring and I
don't know if it's because it was the third game or what it was a jelly
tasting contest you know they had the jelly Club of the Month gift at the end
of the movie well we had five different jellies for people to taste and we asked
who want we just asked for volunteers so five couples were up there I think and
the spouse was giving blindfolding them and giving them a taste of the jelly it
was way too long our house was packed with food and so storage for all those
jellies in little plastic cups was hard hard to find and we had to do it in
advance like we had to put the jelly in each Cup in advance so Isaac would just
suggest like having two people do it or five people and only having two jellies
to taste our jellies that we had were strawberry pineapple apricot red plum
grape and peach mango those are some that are out there and available we also
recommend not having the games in the same location we had all of the games
happen at the front of our den I would do the front first two there and then
another area have your last game or your trivia game or your jelly tasting game
and then we gave away gifts or prizes for this game and some costume parties
we have since my channel is about Travel Tips
because I'm a pilot life we have collected over the years several
first-class amenity kits and we also gave away a glass moose mug I found a
moose mug ornament all kinds of themed people are not expecting a gift but a
gift that goes with the theme of the movie was so fun to buy I don't mind
spending the money I have to go have lunch with people so I need to stop
video and I will come back and video it later here are some of the props that we
use I printed them out on the at fedex kinko's like I said and then just have
them in an area beside our Clark Griswald cutout and you can see this is
where we put the tape on the back but it's a lot to cut out so just remember
that when people were leaving our party I had a basket full of gift bags and I
just tied on a little message about friendship I think it's most important
to have Luke just some jelly packets in there because the write-up has to do
with jelly and friendship I will link that below as well it says this year we
hope that all of your grapes of wrath' and sour grapes can be stomped to the
side and that you can squeeze all the memories you can into 2019 we want you
to know that your friendship is like a jelly of the Month Club it's the gift
that keeps on giving the whole year through in this ain't no can friend ship
it's one we want to preserve forever let's spread friendship all around this
town thank you for coming to our party I made that up travel tips by Lauri ok let
us know if you have a National Lampoon's Christmas vacation party and any new
ideas just leave them below and have fun being creative and treating your friends