Ideas for throwing a picture-perfect Oscar party at home

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- You may not be nominated or even have a ticket to the Academy Awards, but you can still make Hollywood's big night a blast by hosting your own picture-perfect Oscar bash.

Dan Shapiro of Los Angeles and his friends take the Academy Awards pretty seriously.

"We have voting and ballots, and each category is assigned a different point value," said Shapiro.

Official ballots, dressing up and fun décor, such as posters and napkins, make your event award-winning, along with following along electronically with the new Oscar App.

Get your party going at the front door with a red carpet or a runner, call your guests' name, have them strike a pose and shoot away.

Shapiro and his friends also do a pot luck where people bring Oscar-themed dishes.

"We're finding more and more that people are having Oscar parties at home and inviting people over and wanting to bring a hostess gift to the party," said Greg Roth of Modern Bite bakery.

Keeping the film alive through food is a great idea. Roth showed us the bakery's offerings, such as Oscar and Hollywood shortbread squares, black and white cookies for "The Artist," toasted coconut pineapple cupcakes for "The Descendants," a bourbon pecan pie in honor of "The Help," "Moneyball" cookies and chocolate truffles for "Midnight in Paris."

"The Academy Awards are a fabulous time to get a whole bunch of people together, so you got to make it easy," said Michael McCarty, owner of Michael's in Santa Monica.

McCarty says to serve lots of little things for variety and simplicity, such as his bar bites menu of mini cheese burger sliders, little BBQ pulled-pork buns, duck confit on crostini and chicken wings in waffle and syrup.

He suggests buying skinny fries at the market and then topping them with a little truffle oil, salt and pepper, parmesan cheese and fresh thyme. It's definitely different than a bag of potato chips.

McCarty likes to marry movie themes to the beverages, but if you're stuck on what to concoct, he suggests using Google for ideas.

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food, academy awards, food coach, lori corbin

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