This week, I hosted my book club, Read 'Em and Eat, for dinner and a discussion of the wonderful (and eye-opening!) book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. You can view the book here at Amazon.com.
There was a seriously science-y, lab-y, medical research-y component to this book - but don't let that scare you away from reading it - so I decided to run with that for the silliness I always go through when I host my group.
I ordered a bunch of stuff from www.homesciencetools.com for the night. Readers of the book will get the reference on the place markers I made out of petri dishes, glue, and something AWESOME I happened upon at Michael's: Martha Stewart Microbeads. I wrote each guest's name "HeLa style" in the petri dishes, then sprinkled the microbeads in and swooshed them around so the beads would stick in the glue. I thought it looked neat and sort of like bacteria, which was actually desirable in this instance!!Then, another one of my www.homesciencetools.com purchases turned into a centerpiece and party favor holder, commonly known as two plastic test tube racks. I bought some Giant Test Tubes from the same place, and put hydrangeas in them, then put the party favors in more test tubes with lids. They were all in the rack, and I labeled each test tube with the guests names as if they were specimens (it's summer, and we're bored already in our house - what can I say?!) Here's how that turned out:
Admittedly, the centerpiece looked tons better when I had all of the favors lined up in it, but I was too frazzled getting ready for dinner to remember to take a picture of it! The favors were beaded bookmarks that I like to make. I picked out beads that were sort of ethereal looking so they'd look nice and cell-like in the test tubes.
The last research lab-inspired sort of thing I did was put the cream and sugar for the coffee in beakers.
I absolutely *love* doing this sort of thing. You can draw inspiration from all sorts of places for dinners you host or parties you throw! I made a conscious effort not to go the gross-out route, which could have EASILY been done, but given that we had to eat dinner at this function, I decided it would be a bad idea!
Anybody know what I can do with my test tube racks, leftover petri dishes and test tubes, and beakers?
Oh well, let me know what you think. As usual, please be nice!
