Voodoo, Vodka, and a Van Ride Home.

The biggest fundraiser of the year at my son's elementary school is the auction.  Each family donates an item that will go on the auction block.  This year we teamed up with 4 other families and auctioned off a Voodoo, Vodka, and a Van Ride Home party.  The entire event started with a surplus of vodka (terrible, terrible luck, I know) and instead of drinking it all down, we tailored our party to it.  We infused the vodkas with five different flavors: pepper (as in habenero, jalapeno, and others), ginger, coffee, raspberry, and a quadruple citrus.  Voodoo Doughnuts is a famous doughnut joint here in Portland, and no one can drive themselves after a night of combining the two, and thus: Voodoo, Vodka, and a Van Ride Home.  I found these gorgeous apothecary bottles and the taller bottles behind them online:

After studying the various types of Voodoo (Haitian, African, New Orleans, etc.) we decided to take bits from each and make our own: North Portland Voodoo or, NoPoVooDoo.  The entire story has been written.  If you have any interest, I'd be happy to share it. 

We assigned a characteristic and an element to each flavor to flesh out the graphics and lore behind the Voodoo:

Pepper = radiance = sun

Ginger = grounding = earth

Coffee = focus = universe

Raspberry = passion = wind

Citrus = cleansing = water

We paired a delicious cocktail with each infusion and set a table to match.  Guests could mingle around, taste the infusions straight or have a cocktail made for them.  Each table was manned by one of us.

The Coffee Table:

The Raspberry Table:

The Ginger Table:

The Citrus Table:

The Pepper Table:

The VOODOO DOUGHNUTS!

The spread:

We hired a Henna tattoo artist to adorn our guests:

Each guest was lucky enough to take home an original handmade voodoo doll (with our school uniform colors pinned in!), a potion of their own, recipes for all the drinks, the NoPoVooDoo legend, and of course, a rubber chicken.

The party was a blast - we had SO much fun!  Check out more photos on my flickr account.