All tagged Party Food
For my cousin’s bridal shower, she wanted the food to be a “chip” and dip style charcuterie set up. She gave us a list of her favorites dips and dippers to go along with it. So most of this was not an original idea by myself. Her and her maid of honor did a good job coming up with different food.
Last weekend, I helped host a bridal shower for my cousin, Ashley. She is getting married in November, and I love hosting a good event! Her maid of honor and mom help with all the ideas, but I wanted to share how adorable everything turned out. I plan to post more details later about different parts of the shower! But the general theme was “miss to mrs”.
Instead of doing a cake for Melody’s birthday party, I did cupcakes. I did this for a few reasons. One, I do not have to cut a cake this way. It is one less thing I have to plan for. Two, even before COVID, it made me feel better to have her blow out a candle on a single cupcake vs an entire cake that people will be eating. Three, it is generally cheaper. And four, it makes it easier to give out cupcakes (or this time around we already had plates made), rather than cut pieces of cake to hand out. I always pick colors that match the theme of the party, but I also add some form of cupcake toppers. I decided to make easy ones this time around.
We kept the food simple for Melody’s Doc McStuffins birthday party. I didn’t want to overwhelm the kids with too much food and distract from the fun of the play area. And at the time of planning, I was unsure how much time the kids would have in the party room to eat.
When deciding food for Melody’s Doc McStuffins themed birthday party, I tried to keep it foods I knew she would eat as well as keep it simple. Very last minute, I decided to make some iced cookies. I had Brad use his 3D printer to make me two cookies cutters. One was the number 6, and another was a bandaid from the TV Show.
While I wanted to be sure and have food that Melody liked at her birthday party, I also wanted food to fit the theme. I tried to incorporate as much "rainbow” as I could and also appeasing Melody!
For Melody’s 5th birthday, she wanted a Rainbow Ranger themed party. Well actually, about a month before she changed her mind to Doc McStuffins, but mommy had already bought Rainbow Rangers, so maybe Doc next year, ha. Anyhow, Rainbow Ranger itself was hard to find, but we did find lots of rainbow things we used along with toys we already had. Melody was specific and had to approve most things because she wanted everything to be in true rainbow order (aka ROYGBIV). The party itself turned out cute, and she loved it.
Melody’s birthday party this year was at night instead of during the afternoon like parties past. So I felt like food needed to be handled slightly different. Since it was from 5-7, I knew I needed to serve dinner food as well as the dessert food I had planned. My original idea of her party included more kids, more people, less food, and all desserts!
For Melody’s 4th birthday party, she wanted it to be Elsa themed. Instead of only focusing on Elsa, I did focus on snowflakes, blue, and other Frozen things we could find. I had grand plans for this party, but then COVID-19 hit. She originally wanted to invite her entire preschool class. But then school was cancelled, and even if I wanted to, it would be near impossible to get in contact with all of them. We also had trouble determining a date that we felt comfortable even seeing family for a party. We opted to keep the party dramatically small and only had immediate family and her best friend there. And we did it the weekend after her birthday. We decided this about 2 weeks before, but since I had already did so much planning, and I only needed to make 4 invitations, that part was easy. So follow along to my smallish Frozen party :)
One of the things I find hardest about planning any event is what kind of food to serve! It really can be hard because you want to have plenty of food, a variety for everyone, but not also not spend a fortune. The same can be said about the baby shower I had for my best friend a while back. I mainly tried to serve food that I knew she liked, and I also shopped BOGO sales at Publix to help keep the cost down.
My best friend, Emily, recently had a baby boy! It is the first boy for both sides of their family and for the both of us. As you may have noticed throughout my blog, we spend a lot of time with Emily and her daughter Lydia. Lydia and Melody are just two weeks apart in age, and I suspect over time, her new boy will end up just like a little brother to Melody too! I hosted a baby shower for her back in October. I plan to go into more details of the crafts I did for the shower in the future, but follow along today to read all about her shower in general.
For Melody’s third birthday, we had a Snow White themed party. As far as decor went, I played off the Snow White colors and apples. I also included lots of pictures of Melody dressed like Snow White. And I even added in some of her toys.
For Melody’s Snow White birthday party, I wanted to keep the food simple and light. Years past I always spent way too much on food, and I had way too much leftover. So this year I decided I would do a few smaller things and then do something that was the focus/centerpiece of the food. I kept the dessert on a separate table, so that is why I decided to do this approach.
As I mentioned in many posts it feels like, I wanted to make cut out sugar cookies for Melody’s Snow White birthday party. Well I worked on a recipe for a while and finally perfected a cookie recipe and a cookie icing recipe. I used this recipe to also make apple cookies for Melody’s end of year teacher gifts. Well Emily asked if I could make Paw Patrol cookies for Lydia’s third birthday.
At Melody’s Snow White birthday party, I wanted a main focus when it came to the food. I wanted to go lighter this year, so I hoped to play off the theme of the party. I came up with doing a caramel apple bar for the party. It played off the “apple” portion of the theme, and it was relatively inexpensive and easy!
I decided earlier in the year that I wanted to make iced sugar cookies for Melody’s birthday party this year. They are so expensive to buy, but they make parties so adorable. So I searched and found a recipe that worked perfectly (cookie recipe and icing recipe). It took me quite a few attempts to get the icing perfected, but eventually I produced the perfect consistency for icing cookies.
When Melody made the decision to have a Snow White birthday party, I already had the idea to do a Snow White ‘Barbie’ cake. Growing up I had many Barbie cakes at my birthdays and my birthday parties. I talked with my mom to confirm she still had the cake mold. And luckily she DID. So she gave me the mold, and I decided to attempt this cake. I was super nervous about making it, and I could not have made it without my mom for sure!
The theme for Melody's second birthday was "You are my Sunshine". I contemplated the food to serve for quite a few months. I wanted to have food that I knew Melody would eat, but that isn't much these days. I also wanted to do something fancy and unique. However, since we were living in a hotel, we had to adapt.
Since Halloween is right around the corner, I wanted to share some different ideas for food you can have at your Halloween gatherings!
For Melody's First Birthday Party, I really struggled with what food to have at her party. We knew we would have cake and an ice cream sundae buffet, but I wasn't really sure what to do about other food or if I should even have other food. We planned to have about 30 people or so, and we opted for a party at 2 pm. So we knew we would not need heavy food, but I wanted some sort of appetizers for everyone to snack on. I contemplated continuing with the ice cream theme, but I wasn't exactly sure how to do that. So we opted for some various finger foods. I also was sure to include a few things I knew Melody and some of the other kids could have.
