Activity Awards

Looking for a fun event?  Consider hosting a chili cook-off! Whether big or small, cook offs are fun to participate in, whether as a contestant, a judge, or an eater.  With all of the popularity of cooking competitions, why not put your skills to the test and enter your favorite chili recipe!

When hosting a cookoff at your home, church or office, check out my past post ‘Top 8 tips for a Chili Cook-Off”.  Tips include using crock pots for serving, taster cups for trying each chili entry and judging strategies.

Today’s blog is about the fun stuff, Awards and Prizes, our specialty.  Add hype to your competition with hardware for your judges, participants, AND winners!

Participants:

Many hosts give each participant a momento of the event. Popular inexpensive gifts include Participation Ribbons, Chili Cookoff Medal, and our best-selling lapel pins, Chili Pot or Chili Pepper.

Judges: 

Acknowledge your judges with a ribbon.  We offer two different styles of judge ribbons, the Chili Judge Rosette Pin or the Chili Cook Off Judge ribbon.  When pinned on the judge, it gives them the authority to make the ultimate decision on the cook off winner!

Champions: 

Trophies2Go offers a huge range of trophies and awards for your winners, from a one-time award, to a trophy that can be passed around from year to year.  For a more traditional award, it doesn’t get any better than a blue ribbon. The popular Chili Cookoff Ribbon comes in Blue for 1st place, Red for 2nd place, White for 3rd place, and Purple for any special awards categories you may have.

Trophies: 

We offer a wide range of chili trophy styles in all price ranges.

- One time trophies: Our new Red Chili Pepper Trophy is a bright and fun trophy; it's gotten great feedback from customers.  Our Flaming Hot Chili Pot Trophy is over the top, 80's style, but is sure to be talked about! Resin chili trophies are extremely popular with my favorite being the Hefty Black Cauldron Trophy.

- Perpetual (Ongoing) Trophies: If you have an annual cookoff like we do, you may want to award a perpetual trophy for your cookoff. This is great for bragging rights, as the winner's name can be engraved on the side and the trophy is passed around from year to year.

- Unusual awards:  Consider our new Chili Cookoff Championship Award Belt.  This impressive belt with make a huge impact on your participants and winner!

Other Gifts:

If trophies, ribbons and medals aren’t really your style, maybe you’d like a more functional gift for your winners.  Great items include our engraved cutting boards, engraved ladles, chili pepper aprons.  One cute hostess gift idea is a hot sauce and engraved wooden spoon inside.   We offer many personalized kitchen accessories that will impress your winner or hostess.

We love chili cookoffs, as they are the perfect fall and winter activity to connect with friends and family.  I hope your cook off is a huge success!

Cheers,
Jessica

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Planning a chili cook off? Whether at your work, your church, or at home with family and friends, hosting a cook off can be a daunting task, believe me, I know.  Every year we host a chili cookoff for our group of college friends and we even did a chili cook-off for our holiday party here at Trophies2Go one year!

Below I've shared my favorite tricks I've learned from hosting chili cook-offs.  I hope they help you with planning your competition.  It starts with a little preparation ahead of time and then having the right tools at the event.

Top 8 Tips For A Chili Cook Off

Make it easy by serving in crock pots.

1. Serve Chili In Crockpots. Have your contestants bring their chili entry in a crock pot, then plug in the pot to reheat. You can use cute numbers to label each entry so that it's a blind tasting.

2. Extension cords. It's helpful to have a couple of extension cords handy in case you don’t have enough power outlets. Also, with all of the crock pots plugged in, be aware of blowing a fuse. We haven't had this problem at our events, but it's good to have a plan just in case.

3. Dish Up The Chili For Your Judges. In my experience, it gets quite busy in the kitchen, with guests or judges dishing up their chili and everyone milling around. My solution is to create a plate of numbered taster cups and dish up the entries ahead of time (see below).

4. Use Taster Cups. Before guests arrive, I prepare my "taster cups". I tape small plastic or paper cups onto a paper plate with the entry number written in sharpie on each cup. At the event, I fill each taster cup with the correct entry, leaving a spot in the middle of the plate for a palate cleanser, such as crackers, cornbread, or corn chips.

Small tasting cups attached to paper plates are a great way to serve chili for judging.

Also, be sure to judge the chili with the correct accompaniments. For example, if the chef wants cheese added to the top of his/her chili, by all means add it when filling the cups.

After filling with chili, I hand out the plates to the judges. This not only eliminates chaos in the kitchen, but it also disguises whos chili is whos. After judging is over, everyone can go back for a bowl (or two) of their favorite.

5. Have Enough Serving Utensils. Each chili entry needs its own ladle and spoon. Ladles work great to dish up bowls of chili, but are too big to fill taster cups. Instead use a smaller teaspoon for that task.

6. Create An Easy Way to Judge. For our cookoff, we give each person 2 poker chips. They have 2 votes for their favorite chili. Adults get one color of chip, the kids get a different color. Then votes are counted and prizes are awarded. I've also seen score sheets used. They can be found online at Chica and Jo's website.

An engraved cutting board makes the perfect prize for your chili champ!

7. Ad Hype With Prizes and Awards. That’s where we come in! We offer chili cook off awards in every price range, from blue ribbons to engraved cutting boards. Browse the chili section of our website to see all the choices. My favorite is the Annual Chili Cook-Off Trophy; that's what I will give the winners at our chili cookoff later this month.

8. Don't Forget The Decorations! This is what adds the extra touch to your competition. Ideas for chili cookoff decorations include chili peppers, stock pots and southwestern themed décor. Having an occasion to decorate for is always fun too - such as hosting on a football game day or someone's birthday. Check out our Trophies2Go Chili Cookoff pinterest page for even more ideas!

I hope these 8 tips help you plan the perfect event. Feel free to share what worked for you, or if you have other ideas, add them below. Wishing you a wonderful chili cook-off!

Cheers,
Jessica

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on October 10, 2014.  It has been updated for content.

Ready to host a Halloween Party?  Get ideas at today’s blog post for hosting a  Halloween Costume Party!  I'm going to be tailoring this post to an adult party; If you want to read about kid’s party ideas, read my past post Prizes and Awards for Halloween Contests.

Theme

Our hand painted mummy trophy will be a hit at your Halloween costume party!

Besides your invite list, the first thing to figure out is a theme.  At my costume party last year my theme was "Halloween", original, I know.  If I host one again this year, I would definitely choose a theme so my guests can plan their costumes and people can get creative!  Some possible themes include:

Well Known Couples: There are thousands of combinations from history, pop culture or even items that go together (think Salt & Pepper, Peanut Butter & Jelly)  I found great couples costumes for sale at Costume Craze to spark your imagination.

TV Shows/Movies: Game of Thrones, Marvel characters, NFL Football, Walking Dead, anything popular could be included.

Monster Party: Vampires, Werewolves, Frankenstein: everyone comes in a "dead" costume, with fake blood and gore.

Star Trek vs. Star Wars:  Epic battle for the best iconic (and nerdiest) Sci Fi space adventure!

Nightmare Before Christmas: Make a creepy Christmas theme just like the movie.

All About the 80's:  Movies and Music.  Think hair bands, Devo, Top Gun, 16 Candles; so many ways to get creative!

Food & Drink:

Halloween "finger foods" are easy to eat and don't require plates or utensils!

I’m always a fan of food - and especially drinks - at a party.  People get munchie and it's a great opportunity to reinforce your theme with creative snacks and cocktails!

Food:  Apps and small finger foods are always good to have as they are easy to eat and don't require plates and silverware.  Punchbowl has a list of “finger food” recipes that are perfect for your guests to snack on. There are tons of cute Halloween food ideas online, Pinterest is a great source.

Drinks:  I'm always a fan of a tasty themed cocktail.  Get “bloody” Halloween cocktail recipes here and again there's always ideas on Pinterest.  It's really the best for finding fun drink recipes!

Awards

Competition is a great way to get your guests involved in your party as long as you have a prize for the winner!   We create many Halloween awards for “Best Costume” and here are some possible categories to include at your next Halloween party.

Best Costume Categories Include:  "Scariest Costume", "This costume fits my personality", "Cutest Costume", "Va Va Voom!" or "Sexiest Costume", "Most Creative Costume", "People’s Choice", "Funniest Costume", "Best Group Costume", "Penny Pincher", "Best Couple", "Most Original", and lastly "Cheesiest Costume".

This year our Graphic Designer Lori N has created some awesome limited-edition, hand-painted Halloween trophies, perfect for your contest winner.  We offer fabulous green witches, grinning jack-o-lanterns, wrapped mummies and creepy zombies!  Also check out our custom Halloween medals, a perfect best costume prize!

For more ideas, check out Halloween Party Ideas from Punchbowl, they have tons of great suggestions to get your creativity flowing.  Also check out our Trophies2Go pinterest page where I’ve pinned cute decorating ideas, recipes, crafts and also my favorite trophies and medals for a costume contest.  I hope your Halloween is full of treats, that's no trick!

Cheers!
Jessica

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Do you have special plans to celebrate Independence Day?  Perhaps you are planning a 4th of July parade, BBQ, or cooking contest?  Or maybe you are hosting a fireworks display and picnic?  Add extra hype to your event with one of our 4th of July Awards!  See ideas below to take your event to the next level.

July 4th Awards:

These patriotic trophies are the perfect symbol for Independence Day!

We offer a large selection of 4th of July themed trophies for your celebration.  These include flag trophies, acrylic awards, and even fireworks medals!

4th of July Parade: If your parade has a competition between floats, bands, or other community groups, be sure to award trophies to the winners.  Popular awards include larger trophies with posts, such as our Rising Star Competition Trophies.  In two styles, these grand trophies feature star trim and can be made with red column, blue column, or stars and stripes flag column.

Barbecue Cook Off:  Attending a cookout?  Bring the host a one-of-a-kind BBQ trophy or engraved cutting board.  Or consider hosting your own BBQ cooking competition!  Have your contestants bring their favorite meat to grill and judge the winners. Check out our large selection of BBQ trophies here.

Cooking Contests:  The 4th of July is the classic time for hot dog and pie eating contests.  If you host a food contest, award your winners one of our cooking trophies.  Or make your own custom trophy, especially for your event with one of our sublimated awards.

Corn Hole is a fun 4th of July game for all ages!

Backyard Games: The holiday weekend is the perfect time to get outside and enjoy family time.  Backyard games, such as horseshoes, bocce balls, ladder ball, corn hole toss, and pickle ball bring the family together with good, wholesome, All-American fun!  Award trophies to your winners - see all of our selection in our Backyard Games section.

For other ideas for decorations, costumes, parades, and more, check out our 4th of July Pinterest Page!

No matter how you choose to spend the July 4th holiday, it's great to be an American!   Wishing you a happy and healthy Independence Day celebration with family, friends and neighbors.

Cheers!
Jessica

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on June 23, 2015.  It has been updated for content.

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Are you searching for an epic gift for a special dad?  Forget the boring tie and personalize something special from Trophies2Go!  All of our engraved trophies, awards and gifts include expert etching in the price.  Below are some of our most popular gifts for dads.

The perfect gift for a Dad who loves to grill!

Barbecue Gifts:  Does your dad like to grill?  Get him his own personalized BBQ tool set,  with a special message engraved on the box and the tools.  We also have fun aprons, engraved cutting boards, and awesome BBQ trophies for your favorite griller.

License Plate Frame:  Tell the world how awesome your dad is with a Personalized License Plate Frame! We offer two choices that can be customized especially for your dad.

Framed Artwork:  A sweet, meaningful gift is a framed hand print or piece of artwork created especially for Dad. Add a small plate to the bottom of the frame with an engraved message.  It will give the artwork the 'wow' factor that makes it look like it belongs in an art gallery!  Check out all of the framing options at my favorite frame store, Aaron Brothers.

Golf Gifts: Many dads are golfers and want to brag about a hole in one or an epic golf round.  Cherish the memory with a special golf gift!  We offer many hole-in-one trophies.  Or store a dozen of dad's favorite Titleist golf balls in a keepsake box with a special photo.

Let your dad know he's #1 with a 'World's Greatest DAD" trophy!

World's Best DAD Trophy:  If your dad is #1, let him know with his own trophy.  We have a large selection of cup trophies in all price ranges that any dad would love to display at his office or in his man-cave!

Check out our Father's Day Gifts Pinterest page for other ideas for cute and fun gifts for Dad.

Happy Father's Day to all the terrific dads out there!  A special shout out to the three dads here at Trophies2Go - Mike, Paul, and Tom.  Wishing you a wonderful day!

Cheers!
Jessica

*Editor's note: This post was originally published on June 9, 2015.  It was updated for content.