Panini Party!

I have been part of a Bunko group with a bunch of my girlfriends for 7 years now.  Hard to believe!  We've had some girls drop out and new girls join, but about half of the group of 12 has been together the entire 7 years.  We get together once a month at one of our homes for dinner, drinks and a little dice rolling.  It is always one of my favorite nights of the month.  

April is always my month to host.  It's always hard to decide what to serve for dinner.  I'm not exactly a pro in the kitchen so cooking for 12 is a bit of a stretch for me!  The past 2 years I have been so consumed on a project at work that I've actually ordered catering instead of cooking!  But this year I decided to make up for the lack of effort and try something new.  Thanks to an idea I found on Pinterest (seriously, how did I live without it?), I came up with the idea to have a Panini Party!  See the original inspiration here.  

I loved the chalkboard signs she used so I decided to do the same.  I found this great tutorial (also on Pinterest) on how to create a chalkboard printable.  Once I got started, it was actually pretty easy to do and I loved how all of my signs turned out!

  
I found a few good panini recipes and got all of the fixings plus some extras so people could create their own.  We had lots of fun creating our masterpieces and even more fun devouring them!  Here are some pics from our fun night:

Beautiful ladies creating their Paninis

Time to grill!

For dessert I made a snickerdoodle cake with brown sugar cinnamon buttercream frosting - yum!  The recipe is also from Pinterest of course.  You can find it here.  If you decide to try it, you can probably cut the frosting recipe in half.  It made way more than I needed!

Here is a photo of most of our crew (a couple were unable to make it).  Fun times!  

I will definitely have another Panini party.  Other than shopping, a little bit of slicing, and laying everything out on platters, it was really easy to prepare.  Plus we had leftovers which made for great lunches over the weekend!