Ideas for Hosting a Big Game Football Tailgate

 

Invite all your best pals over to a tailgate party right at home for the big game or any other fun time during football season!

   

To get 'the ball rolling', I set out to create an easy and simple tailgate eats for guests to enjoy. When throwing a tailgate, just don't go for the usual spread of food on the back of your truck or car trunk. I made an invitation food cards, mini pennants, cupcake toppers, and LOTS of cuts outs of footballs to give the tailgate spread a bit of flair and fun!
 

For this event, I pulled most of my inspiration from the green of the football fields, brown leather from the football and referee uniforms as reflected in the bands I made for these hoagie wraps. You'll see that adding a strip of parchment paper around the wrap first will prevent any ink from the striped printed paper from touching your food, as printer ink is probably not the safest thing to ingest. I added a football cut out and jute twine for a bit of extra detail and presented the wraps on a square white platter.

 I really wanted to keep the items for the guests to snack on light, portable, but all still keeping with the tailgate theme. We served snacks that were easy to carry and portable. Game Day chili was served in adorable tulip jars by Weck. Fiery and delicious hot wings were placed in a small snack boats that I made using this template that was printed onto kraft paper cardstock and again, making sure to use a square of parchment to protect my food.

I loved how these drink cozies turned out. They really make the bottles of root beer stand out on their own. I created them using a 3" strip of kraft paper and then, ran the paper through my paper crimper and sealed each wrap with a bit of tape. Next, I cut out a football clip art image and glued one on each wrapper for a simple but, fun bottle wrapper!

 Here is a fun way to include the kids when preparing for your tailgate fun. These game day brownies were easy to make with store-bought mix. After baking and cooling we iced the brownie and then allowed to freeze for about 15 minutes, then cut out football shapes and allowed the kids to add the football details with white frosting.

Our game day popcorn and pretzels were served in paper bags and wrapped in parchment paper.  I made simple labels for the bags of popcorn and stuck cute mini pennants into the bags. I created the pennants by cutting out small diamond shapes from the paper pack and then wrapping them around striped straws that I had on hand.

 Each pretzel was placed in a parchment envelope that I made but folding a square of parchment into an envelope shape and simply tying a cord of jute twine around each and adding a football cut out to them.   I also set  out peanuts in a large candy jar....and served individual ones in mason jars.

You should know that, I love making cupcakes for all my events and I certainly don't mind popping a cupcake topper onto them for extra flair. I designed printable toppers and used the green striped stock paper hand to make some of them. Alternately, adding the football cutouts would work great, as well!

Once everyone has snacked on their delicious eats, they can work off they meals by playing a fun tailgate game of ladder-ball before game time! It's sure to be a fun time to be had by all!  I scored a last minute deal on clearance at my local discount store but you can find a similar one here.

If you can't make it to the big game or don't want the hassle of waiting in long lines to enter your local team's stadium, tailgating at home is a great way to get in on the fun of football season.

 Please visit my Etsy Shop to purchase printables from this post

LET'S GET SOCIAL!
What are some of your favorite weeknight meals?  I'd love to hear!!!
Visit me @cwbdparties on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest



  This post has been updated as of 2/3/2017 and was originally featured as a guest post on MG Party Impressions.  All content, design, styling and photography were all done by me.  

(This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission when you purchase any of the linked items.  Money generated from such links are used to create and deliver content for this blog. )