The Dildo Drop

By Anna

 Turns out the life expectancy for a vibrator isn’t so long. 

My friend is an Army wife with 2 beautiful children…..and a healthy sex drive. A few years ago her man went to Iraq for 15 months to look for weapons of mass destruction (yea, well…).

SHE went to Kansas to engage in vibrator annihilation. Really. She went through 3 vibrators. Most of them died of natural causes but one died in a tragic accident. Here's the story:

One night she rented the super sexy Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt (who looks like her husband, by the way). Since the kids were sound asleep she decided to have a rendez-vous with her new shiny vibrator. While she was in the act she heard her daughter wake up and head for her room. In a panic, she jumped out of bed and slammed the vibrator into the wall. It broke into a zillion pieces. Not able to see, she knocked over her desk and night stand trying to find the light switch. When her daughter entered the room, she was standing naked, with a ½ busted vibrator in her hand and plastic pieces all around her. Her daughter turned on the light, stared at her blankly and then simply got into her mother's bed without a word.  My friend was picking up plastic pieces for weeks. To this day she doesn’t know if she was busted or not. I guess she’ll find out when adolescence hits.  

During her husband’s deployment we drank lemon drop shots before catching our ride downtown to dance our pains away. So anytime I drink one of these, I think of her. But we’re renaming it The Dildo Drop in her honor. Serve it at your next sex toys or lingerie party.

The Dildo Drop

3 oz. Absolute Citron

3 oz. Sweet & Sour (or lemonade)

Sugar the rim of two low ball cocktail glasses & garnish w/a lemon. Shake w/ice & distribute evenly.

You can sip it or slam it - but just don’t drop it. My girlfriends would term that alcohol abuse.

Not a Cookie Rookie

By Rachel

The first time I ever baked cookies I was 12 years old. I overcooked them and my brother tormented me by using them as Frisbees for the dog. Trauma. Probably need therapy. But, even after I rescued some of them, I can assure you, burnt cookies don’t taste any better with icing on them.

But, 23 years and 2 children later (don’t do the math), I am proud to say that I have perfected my cookie baking abilities. I’m sure this is due to having to provide them for every friggin’ school holiday party known to schooldom.

And it’s survival! Have you seen those evil looks from Nazi-stay-at-home moms when someone tries to bring store bought cookies? I have friends who are so intimidated that they repackage store bought cookies to look like homemade ones.  I would do that, too, but my children would rat me out. Little snitches.

Did you know that cookies were discovered by accident? Yep. Just like penicillin, sweetener, and microwaves. Cookies began as little test cakes used to check out oven temperature. Small amounts of cake batter were dropped onto pans to test the temperature of the oven before the cakes were baked. No one thought the “test cake” would become a dessert on its own but, hey, who knew that mold would fight infection?!  (My mom’s refrigerator could supply an entire hospital!) By the 14th century, cookies and cookie recipes were everywhere throughout Europe. Now, don’t you feel enlightened?

As for your Estrofests entertaining, cookies aren’t just for kids. They’re so easy – not like cake where you actually have to use plates and forks (well, some of us use plates and forks).

So, for your next girlfriends’ Inside-the-Purse-Scavenger-Hunt or your next purse exchange party, use a purse cookie cutter and try these recipes:

Sugar cookie recipe

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

In a bowl or container of your choice, mix together on medium speed the butter and sugar and blend until smooth. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). Hide the dough in the vegetable compartment of your refrigerator so the kids and spouse won’t find it (you know they would never look there for a snack).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (find your manual if you don’t remember how to turn it on). Roll out the dough on a floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes using a cookie cutter or if you can’t find one, use your kid’s play dough shape makers. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 6 to 8 minutes. Cool completely before icing.  The recipe yields approximately 5 dozen cookies.

 Icing recipe

4 cups confectioners' sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter

5 tablespoons milk

1.5 teaspoon vanilla extract

food coloring

In a bowl or container of your choice, mix together on medium speed the confectioners' sugar and butter until smooth. Slowly mix in the vanilla and milk until smooth and stiff. You can color with food coloring if desired. The recipe yields approximately 3 cups.

Decorate

Divide the icing into several bowls and tint with food coloring. Place the icing in piping bags and decorate. You can also use sprinkles, candies and any other edible items to enhance your design.

Best Fest Contest

We want to hear about your FAVORITE girlfriends’ party game. Tell us what made it so much fun and how to play it. To enter, simply write your description in a comment to this contest announcement. Your comment will be your entry.

The prize is the hilarious must-have party game, What’s a Dame to Do? AND a box of delicious Godiva hot chocolate. Don't forget to check out our Skiiers Ben Gay recipe (see Payin’ for Pain blog) so you can enjoy a spiked hot chocolate while playing the game.

The starting date is NOW and the ending date is February 5th at midnight EST. Prize notification will be by email – please don’t let us go to spam – we hate it there. Prize will then be mailed to the winner. Winner must respond to the email prize notification within 10 days or the prize will be awarded to another entry – which would totally suck for you if you were the winner! Winner will be chosen by the Estrofests’ 3 <lovely> bloggerettes.

NOTE:

*You must be 18 years old to enter.

*You must be a Follower in order to enter so please sign up!

*Anyone who has attended parties by the Estrofests bloggerettes may NOT use games from parties that we have hosted - sorry. 

Bowled Over by a Soup Bowl Party

By Tonia

If women’s parties are Estrofests, Super Bowl parties are Testo-fests. Parties of men’s ritualistic spectatorship – a happy male civic duty of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, I like seeing muscular men in tights crouched down with their butts in the air. (That’s a “tight end,” isn’t it?) It’s those helmets and mouth guards that don’t do much for me.

It IS the most watched American TV show of the year. And it IS the second-biggest day for gluttony – following Turkey Day, of course. So, it seems that Super Bowl Testo-fests are parties of sitting on your ass, screaming at the TV, belching, and eating yourself into a heart attack. And that’s male bonding. Wow.

I guess some women watch the Super Bowl (and even understand it) but I’m not one. Never sure if this is the game with the pointed ball, the dimpled ball, or the big round ball that goes through a hoop. I’m not sure I know a huddle from a hurdle, or a touchdown from a hoedown. And what is this “illegal use of hands?” I thought that was what 13 year old boys did during slow dances. Or else they “fumbled.” Oh well. What do I know?

So, if you and your girlfriends want to get as far away as possible from Super Bowl Testo-fests - without having to leave the country - we suggest another kind of BOWL party. A SOUP BOWL party! Serve your favorite soup or two (or three if you are an overachieving Susie Homemaker like Rachel). Tell everyone to bring her own “sacked” soup BOWL (bowl in a decorated sack) with a printed joke or funny quotation in it about men and women. When it is time to eat, have everyone select a sack that they did NOT bring themselves. Let them enjoy the BOWL humor before they eat.

For entertainment you can toss pennies into different kinds of BOWLS (i.e. salad BOWL, mixing BOWL, fish BOWL, cereal BOWL…toilet BOWL? Nah…). Make up rules so that guests can win BOWL prizes such as a BOWL full of chocolate kisses, a BOWL full of mini liquor bottles, a BOWL full of travel size lotions, a BOWL of packages of flower seeds, etc.

OR

Purchase a child’s BOWLing set and take turns BOWLing. For every pin NOT knocked down, make a dollar donation to your favorite women’s charity.

And make a Testo-fest into an Estrofest!

The Pale Pussy Martini

By Anna

My post-(thank God) menopausal mother went for her dreaded yearly check-up the other day. During her pelvic exam the doctor nonchalantly announced that her vagina looked pale. Concerned, she asked what that meant – if she should be worried.

“No,” the doctor said, “It’s just pale.”

Relieved, but now feeling irreverent (her happy place) she responded, “Is it about to faint? Is it anemic? Is it unhappy? It’s obviously not embarrassed or it would be BLUSHING.” The doctor was not amused. But, following the exam, my mom rushed to the bar where I was working and, laughing hysterically, told us about her pale vagina. Feeling inspired, another bartender and I created the Pale Pussy Martini in honor of pale pussies everywhere. It’s actually really good! And, no, you don't have to have a pale pussy to drink one.

1 oz. Strawberry vodka
1 oz. Sweet and sour mix
1 oz. Sprite
Splash of cranberry juice


Shake it all up and serve in a sugar-rimmed martini glass. Great for any kind of women’s party - but especially a hysterectomy or menopause party. Or maybe you just want to serve it to your mother to shock her. Go ahead. Shock her. We can’t shock ours.

“I disagree with the use of the word "Pussy" to describe a weak person…the Vagina is the tougher of the two genitals. Think about it. It can pass something 50 times it's size through it. You can pound on it for hours and it goes "More! More!" It bleeds every month and doesn’t die! Meanwhile, my penis, if it gets cold or there's a fight, he's like "I'm outta here!" What I'm trying to say is...My Dick is a Pussy.” - Hal Sparks

Party Planning Made Easy

By Rachel

"I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes — and six months later you have to start all over again." - Joan Rivers

We believe in women's parties. They’re like mini vacations away from all the responsibilities and stress of day to day life. So, in our efforts to get you to party more, here are our party preparation tips to insure your party success.  :)

 BATHROOM

 - Replace the ratty flannel PJs from the bathroom door hook with some sexy lingerie.

 - Remove the Preparation H from the medicine cabinet. Disguise it as toothpaste or Nair.

 - Hide the anti-teeth-grinding mouth guard in the laundry basket.

KITCHEN

 - Scrape out the bottom of the oven so the house doesn’t smell like it’s on fire when you heat up the hor d’oeuvres.

 - Hide the old stacks of mail in the washing machine.

 - Find glassware that looks like a matching set – or at least find some glasses that don’t have paint on them from the kids’ school project.

 - Find the ice bucket that the kids used to catch bugs. Maybe rinse it out.

LIVING ROOM / DINING ROOM

 - Toss the Enquirer magazines and replace them with Newsweek or Good Housekeeping.

 - Wipe down the dining room light fixture that hasn’t been dusted since it was installed. (These things should be self-cleaning like ovens.)

OUTSIDE

 - Accidentally let your neighbor’s dog out of the yard so he won’t bark all evening.

 - Blow the leaves from your front porch and lawn into your neighbors’ yard.

 - Bribe the neighborhood kids to “poop scoop” your yard. Tell them they can keep whatever they collect.

FAMILY

 - Send the kids to granma’s where they can have hours of fun terrorizing her cat.

 - Send the spouse out to run errands. Make sure the list is long enough to keep her/him out for 12 hours.

GETTING YOURSELF READY

 - Wash out your armpits since you won’t have time to shower.

- Find something that doesn’t look like you wore it to a college party in the 70’s or 80’s (and make sure it still fits).

Finally, before the party, make one of my favorite appetizers called Party Dress Veggie Pizzas. I’ve included the recipe below:

The Party Dress Veggie Pizzas

Roll out refrigerated crescent roll dough and cut with a dress cookie cutter. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Mix one 8 oz package of cream cheese with half a package of Hidden Valley Fiesta Ranch Dip Mix. Once the “dresses” have cooled, spread the cream cheese mixture on each dress. Design your Vera Wang gown with items such as:  red bell pepper, pimento, sliced American cheese, chopped black olives, grated carrot, cherry tomato, spinach leaves, broccoli, cucumber strips, etc. 

Just Because It Zips Doesn't Mean It Fits

By Anna

"Some women hold up dresses that are so ugly and they always say the same thing: 'This looks much better on.' On what? On fire?" --Rita Rudner

Recently my roommate and I needed more closet space. We had tons of clothes that were grossly out of style and humiliatingly too small. We made it a special point of getting rid of anything with appliqué, anything from a prom, anything with a yellowed price tag still attached. As we evicted these items from our closets we chunked them into plastic bins. Then an idea.

A clothes swapping party! Genius. Who doesn’t want free clothes?

We invited our girlfriends of all sizes. Told them to bring their unwanted clothes. When the night came for our party, those of us who scored the most were those of us without kids. The mommies of the group just frowned and called us skinny bitches and drank.

For entertainment my roommate goaded me into trying on our fashion "gem." I squeezed my size 7 ass into a size 0 Daisy Dukes & strutted my stuff. With my beer gut hanging over the top and the circulation cut off in my legs, I danced for everyone. (And there will be no pictures of THAT in this blog.)

None of us will ever be the size we were in college. Together we have learned to embrace our changing bodies with humor and support (both the girlfriend kind and the spandex kind).

Later during our party we did a Runway Modeling Show. Leopard pants & sequin tops never looked that good. So, in honor of our roundness and our curves, have a clothes swapping party and fix some Blubber Embracers.

Blubber Embracer (a.k.a. Vegas Bomb)

Fill your high ball glass with ice
Add:
½ cup Red Bull
1 oz. Malibu Rum
1 oz. Crown Royal
1 oz. Peach Schnapps
Stir and drink!

P.S. If you have a hard time letting go of your things, invite your girlfriends for a Purge Me Party. Have them tie you to a chair, gag you, and tear through your drawers and closets purging your fashion disasters. After the clothes have left the premises, your gag and ties can be removed. You may want to save the gag and ropes for a different kind of party later (wink, wink).

Bad Girl Charades

By Tonia

"When I'm good, I'm very good. When I'm bad, I'm better." - Mae West

Therapists recommend getting in touch with your inner child. I say get in touch with your inner Bad Girl. If you're the kind of woman who can live in the suburbs without taking Prozac you really DO need to get in touch with your Bad Side! If you need some books to help you discover your Bad Girl, try some of these:

-- The Good Girls' Guide to Bad Girl Sex

-- The Bad Girl's guide to Getting Personal

-- The Nice Girl's Guide to Talking Dirty

-- The Bad Girls Club 

-- The Bad Girl's Guide to the Party Life
-- Bad Girls Go Everywhere: Wisdom, Humor and Inspiration from Women with Attitude

Or, if you'd rather learn how to be a Bad Girl with company, invite your girlfriends over to play Bad Girl Charades. Get rid of the kids, fix some hot and spicy refreshments and get ready!

DIRECTIONS: Divide guests into two teams. Ask everyone to disguise their handwriting and write down one of their steamiest confessions on a piece of paper. Confessions should include (1) the deed, (2) the place, and (3) the number and gender of steamy deed participants. Fold up all the confessions and have each team place their confessions in TWO separate Tampon boxes (hats are old school). Teams then exchange boxes.

One player at a time draws a confession and, without speaking, acts out the confession for her own team. Set a time limit set (i.e. 60-90 seconds).  If team members can guess the confession within the time limit, that team earns a point. An extra point is earned if the team can guess which player from the other team actually did the deed.

Another version of this game can be played using pornographic versions of famous movie titles. (Our apologies to the writers and producers of these wonderful movies.) Try some of these:

Alice in Whore Land

The Good, the Bad and the Horny

Interview with a Vagina

Screwing Miss Daisy

The Slutty Professor

Shaving Ryan’s Privates

Shakespeare in Lust

Slumdog Mistress

And let your Bad Girl go free.........

Horse Shoed Contessa

By Rachel

Recently I had to explain to my mother that the smoke detector was not the oven timer. She really hates to cook. In fact, when she and my stepdad bought a house a few years back, she wanted to make the kitchen into another bedroom. Well, until she realized that she needed the refrigerator for her party martinis.

I love to cook and prepare food. Not only does it allow me to be creative and to nurture others, it helps me feel connected to women from previous generations – a kind of shared consciousness with women from the past. Unlike them, however, I don’t really sew or quilt. I am not raising 10 or 12 children, thank God (or I would not be writing this blog - I would be locked up in a mental institution). But I do cook and cooking is a marvelous thread through women’s lives.

I live in Texas. While Texas may have a reputation for the limited seasonings of Tabasco and ketchup, this recipe calls for additional tasty ingredients and can be served at your next Western themed girlfriends' party. And don't miss the TIP at the end of the recipe!

Cowgirl Cavier

1 (15 ounce) can black-eyed peas, drained

1 (15 ounce) can black beans, drained

1 (15 ounce) can hominy, drained

8 0z. grape tomatoes, quartered

4 green onions, chopped

1 teaspoon minced garlic

½ green pepper

½ red or yellow pepper

½ cup onion, chopped

2 jalapeno peppers, chopped

1 bunch chopped fresh cilantro

8 oz Italian salad dressing

2 avocados, pitted and peeled and cut into medium-sized pieces

In a large bowl (or a clean bucket), mix together all of the ingredients (except for the avocados and cilantro). Cover and refrigerate for several hours (best if overnight).  Prior to serving, drain the mixture and add the chopped cilantro and avocados. Serve with tortilla chips or Fritos for a true Texas flavor. Tell your kids the black beans are real fish eggs so they won’t eat any of it.

Tip: Make sure you remove the seeds from the jalapeno peppers or your guests will be shooting flames from their mouths. Which might be entertaining but probably not too friendly. Instead, save the seeds to put in your partner’s dinner the next time you have an argument.

Payin’ for Pain

By Anna

Erma Bombeck said she didn’t participate in sports where ambulances waited at the bottom of the hill. My family seems to lack that good sense. Recently my mother took 13 of us snow skiing – men, women and children. She spent an arm and a leg so we could break an arm and a leg. Could this be her revenge for my adolescence?

While I enjoy getting swept off my feet (on the lift or any other way!), I gave “hitting the slopes” a whole new meaning. In fact, if you've never been snow skiing, you can prepare yourself with some of these exercises:

• Visit your local ice cream store and pay $150 to sit in the walk-in freezer for half an hour. Sit in front of a fan that is blowing ice shavings.
• Walk back and forth over and over again through the mall parking lot with weights in your boots. Carry two pairs of skis, and two sets of poles, while holding the hand of a crying child. Pretend you are looking for your car.
• Buy a pair of gloves and throw one away. Go buy another pair of gloves for $75 and throw the same glove away.
• Go to Burger King when a busload of hungry, tired, tourists go in. Try to figure out where the line is and then get in the longest one. Keep asking if it is the line for food.
• Put on as many layers of clothing as you can. Then try to go pee.
• Leg wrestle with a girlfriend for six hours and then try to do it again the next day. Do this without pain medication.

But, oh, the comfort of the cabin. Getting in my Snuggies, sitting next to the fire, drinking my favorite version of an Irish Coffee. You don’t have to go skiing to make this drink, but a girlfriends’ ski trip WOULD be fabulous.

Get with your girlfriends anywhere this winter, start a fire (preferably in a fireplace) and enjoy a Skiers Ben Gay.

Skiers Ben Gay

1.5 oz Jameson Irish Whisky

0.5 Tbls Cinnamon

6 oz Hot Chocolate

Whipped cream

Chocolate or carmel

Stir together the booze, cinnamon and hot chocolate in a coffee mug without going into a trance. Dollop a generous amount of whipped cream on top. Drizzle chocolate or caramel on top if you have that much energy. If you really do go skiing, offer to make a fellow skier one in exchange for a foot massage.