Bacon Wrapped Shrimp on the Grill & Paintball Theme Birthday Party

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My son turned 13 this past weekend and requested bacon wrapped shrimp for his dinner.  I knew we were having our extended family over to celebrate so preparing shrimp on the grill with skewers was the best bet.  Plus, the dip.  You can never forget the dip to add some extra flavor.  To pair with the bacon wrapped shrimp I purchased Kraft’s Green Onion dip.

Having an end of the summer party or family cookout soon?  Try this simple bacon wrapped shrimp recipe.

How to Make Bacon Wrapped Shrimp on the Grill

Ingredients:

• Jumbo/XL Shrimp peeled
• Bacon – 1/2 slice for each piece of shrimp
• Seasoning – I used black pepper and garlic powder
• Butter – melted
• Skewers
• Kraft Dip

Gather your ingredients so you have everything easily accessible before preparing your shrimp to be grilled.

I suggest letting your shrimp marinate for a couple of hours in the refrigerator if you have time.  For a homemade marinade I used melted butter, black pepper and garlic powder.  This is just for taste and majority of it will cook off during the grilling process.  So do not worry about using too much.

Once the marinade is covering the peeled raw shrimp, cover your container and place back in the refrigerator for a couple of hours or until party time when you are ready to light up the grill.

For each piece of shrimp that you plan to grill you will need 1/2 a piece of bacon.  Since you are wrapping the bacon around the shrimp a full size piece will be way too long.

Cook the bacon on the stove top until it is half way done.  You want the bacon to still be flexible so you can wrap it around the shrimp but cooked enough that some of the excess fat is removed.  I like my bacon crispy so I cooked it as long as possible and finished it off on the grill.

When wrapping the bacon around the shrimp and adding it to the skewers, make sure that both ends of the bacon are ran through the skewer to hold in place.  As you can see in the photo I did not do that on a few of the shrimp and the bacon did indeed come unwrapped.

On my second batch I made sure that one end of the bacon was tucked under the other end and the skewer pierced through correctly.

Grill the shrimp until it turns a slight pink.  Under cooked shrimp will be slightly translucent. Watch it closely because if the shrimp is over cooked it will become tough and rubbery.

While shopping at Walmart to get our party items we bought our favorite dips that are a cookout staple in our family.

Have you seen that Kraft changed the labels on their popular French Onion and Green Onion dips?

The Green Onion dip was delicious with the bacon wrapped shrimp and the French Onion dip is a must-have when serving chips and other party snacks.  The next flavor of Kraft dip that our family cannot wait to try is the Bacon Cheddar dip.  It’ll pair well with a baked potato.

Hosting a Paintball Theme Party

Items Used:

• Paint splatter Duck Tape
• Grapes – both red and green
• Black crafting paper
• Brown crafting paper
• Various paint colors
• Paint brush
• Large gumballs
• Round chocolate candy

The birthday party had a paintball theme since our son loves to go paint-balling. Even the gifts we gave him were new gear for his paintball games – a new mask and chest protector.  Since a paintball theme is not very common we had to get creative.

To make a backdrop to hang behind the party table we decided to decorate a paintball target.  Since shooting real paint-balls at paper would cause it to rip, we used a paint brush to splatter the paint.  The black paper we used was purchased on a large roll and we drew the target with a white paint pen.

To continue the theme with the party favors we painted the treat boxes and used gumballs to resemble paint-balls.

The cupcakes were made from Funfetti cake mix with round sprinkles to give that splattered paint look to the dessert as well.

Grapes on skewers were easy for our party guests to grab and eat while sitting outdoors.  When having a cookout we try to keep it as easy to serve the food as possible.  Again, the grapes were round like paint-balls.

I was excited when I found this paintball theme Duck Tape.  It made customizing the bottled water easy.  My teen daughter and her friend were able to help out by wrapping the bottles while watching TV.  It did not take long at all.

We wrapped our gifts in brown paper that we purchased on a roll and splattered paint on them.  Fitting, since the items inside are a paintball mask and paintball chest protector – guess we wanted to be the first to paint them.

As a table center piece and a fun game for the kids we added gumballs and chocolate round candies into a mason jar with candles showing the number 13.  We counted how many were in the jar and let the kids guess.  The plan was the guest that got it correct took home the jar of candy, but instead we just opened it and poured some of the candy in the kids’ treat containers.

Have you ever created your own party theme?

The birthday party cookout was a hit.  Everyone had a great time visiting and the food was delicious.  Bacon wrapped shrimp is already back on our upcoming family meal plan.

Which Kraft dip do you serve at your parties and cookouts?  You can find more recipes on Kraft.com