Murder on the Grill Layout 1

When I was in high school I was lucky enough to fall in with a group of friends that liked to get together often and play games, watch movies or go out to eat. Man those were the days. One year, around New Years, one of my friends hosted a murder mystery game and I was invited to participate. I LOVED it!! We all had such a blast that night that I wanted to replicate it by hosting my own party. I went out and bought two different boxed murder mystery sets at two local stores (that was back when they could still be purchased locally) but alas my friends and I never got around to doing another mystery game night because soon after that night they graduated (they were two years older than me) and several of them went off to college in different states.

Flash forward about twelve years to 2014. My best friend had just got married in August and moved back into town. For the first time I could gather together the right number of players to host my own murder mystery party. I went into my game closet and dusted off the boxed mystery kit from so long ago and started making plans.

To say that I went overboard that first year would be an understatement! It was the first party that I had ever hosted and I was extremely excited. There were so many ideas flooding into my head, between the multitude of Halloween themed decorations and food and the 1950's theme of the party that it was extremely hard to narrow it down. But, there will be an entire post about the food and decor for each party coming soon so I wont elaborate too much right now.

I actually made two layouts for the first year (all the rest only have one) because I had so many photos and images that I wanted to include. Today we will talk about the first page and then Friday's post will be about the second.

The first layout from 2014 came about as a way to use some of the diecut decorations that I had used during the actual party. The drive in sign was placed on the door leading from the living room to the basement, it served no purpose but was a way to add some themed decor to a blank space. Both the car (before it was cut in two) and the body shop words were adhered to the glass of the door leading out into my garage, as a fun play on the fact that cars typically live in the garage and as a way to cover the window so that my guests couldn't see the MESS that is in my garage. Lastly, the large jukebox diecut was adhered to the speaker I was using to play music (I created a custom playlist on Spotify) and the CD that came with the game. All of the images were cut from the Cricut Nifty Fifties Cartridge and I used my label maker to add the party info to the movie marquee and the year to the license plate of the car. 

I added two photo mats to the page to show the different foods that I served. 

I covered all of the photos in  my Halloween Murder Mystery Scrapbook so that the focus would be on the layout and not on the people and food. Plus, I didn't ask for permission from the guests to share their photos on my blog.