Basketball Tournament Party #KettleMadness

The madness that is college basketball in March is super fun! We’re big college sports fans at our house, so when I was asked to throw a basketball tournament party with Kettle Chips the answer was a very easy yes! We enjoyed watching quite a bit of basketball over the weekend, including that AWFUL injury sustained by Kevin Ware of Louisville. That was horrible! Aside from that little part though, we had a lot of fun and kicked off the weekend’s festivities with our basketball tournament party on Friday night! Since we didn’t have any specific teams that we were cheering for (since our Huskers didn’t make the Tournament), I went with just a simple orange basketball theme for decor and foods. Just like in years past, we started off by making our kitchen table look like a basketball! It’s so easy to do using just black electrical tape! For some simple basketball decorations, I just cut circles out of construction paper and drew the lines on to look like a basketball. Then, I hung those behind the table for a bit of extra fun. The kids also thought we needed some on the kitchen island. 😉 The big star of the party though was the food!! I tried to keep things simple yet fun! We had our referee filled with veggies–perfect for dipping in the ranch dip or buffalo chicken dip, basketball oranges (clementines drawn on with a food-safe marker), two kinds of pizza (I added chopped pepperoni on the plain cheese to make it look a bit like a basketball), basketball cookies, and of course, lots of Kettle chips! With all the different flavors of Kettle chips, I decided to set them up as a sort of taste test. I knew the kids would probably prefer the more plain sea salt flavor. So, those were just placed in a large bowl within their reach. But, for everyone else, I set up all the other flavors in different bowls with the chip bags directly behind. In addition to the Sea Salt, we had Sea Salt & Vinegar, Backyard Barbeque, Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper, and Jalapeno!
They were all good! I love the crunchiness of the Kettle chips, plus the natural ingredients used in making them. Did you know that Kettle Brand Potato Chips have been making their great-tasting, all-natural chips since 1982? Crazy huh?! My favorites were the Sea Salt & Vinegar and the Backyard Barbeque! The Jalapeno were good with some ranch dip, because they sure did pack some heat! Whew! All of our guests sampled and sampled and sampled! 😉 The kids got in on the action too! They polished off their fair share of basketball oranges, chips, and pizza. But, of course, their favorite was the basketball cookies! 😉 After all that eating, they burned off some energy while playing some balloon basketball. All you need are orange balloons and a sharpie to draw the basketball lines on! Oh yah…and there was actual basketball watching done too! Well, by the adults anyway. The kids were much too busy playing with their balloons and snacking to notice! 😉A good time was had by all–and some lucky kiddos got to stay up much past their bedtime! Everyone got to pick out their favorite bag of Kettle chips to take home (plus their basketball balloons, of course)! It was such fun! We love having an excuse to get together with friends. And, the College Basketball Tournament is always a good one! We’ve done a party like this every year for the past 3 or 4 years! Super fun! Stay tuned for directions on making the basketball cookies if you’re interested. If you’d like more info or fun ideas from Kettle Chips, be sure to follow along with them  on Facebook and/or on Twitter. Also, for the next few weeks, you can get a $1 off Kettle Chips coupon (on the right sidebar). That should make the chips less than $2 a bag! 🙂 To see more from my shopping trip, you can check out my google+ story here.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias®  and Kettle Chips #cbias #SocialFabric. All opinions & experiences are entirely my own!