Spring is the time of year when nature gets a makeover, so why shouldn’t your tablescape get one as well? Spring is the best time of year to use bright, fun colors to decorate your tablescape. Which is why I decided to decorate this table using pops of my favorite spring colors!
With Easter being the first holiday of the season, it’s also the great time to bring out a few of your Easter decorations to incorporate into your design.
You can find more from Kara on her blog Style Meets Soiree and on Instagram (@stylemeetssoiree)!
Happy Friday, friends! Let’s pop some corks, and kick off the weekend with a sparkling wine party! Who’s in?? With spring finally in the air, a sparkling wine party just seems perfect, doesn’t it? While you certainly don’t need any special occasion to host a sparkling wine party, wouldn’t this be a really fun way to celebrate Easter, or how about Mother’s Day?? (I know this mama would be game!)
Today I’m outlining my top 5 tips for hosting a sparkling wine party. Because enjoying some bubbles and bites with friends is what life’s all about, right?? Plus I’m sharing the #1 mistake I see people make when tasting a Champagne or sparkling wine. So grab a glass, and let’s get started!
Tip 1: Choose Good Sparkling Wine!
Ok this one might seem obvious, but have you ever stood in the wine aisle at the store, reading endless wine labels, trying to figure out which one is actually good? Because I sure have! That’s why I was so excited to discover Gruet Winery. They offer a wide selection of delicious sparkling wines at really reasonable prices, which I love!
I recommend for a sparkling wine party, selecting 3-5 different champagnes. For my party I chose the Gruet Brut Rose, Gruet Brut, Sauvage and Blanc de Blancs. This Gruet Demi Sec would also be a great addition! It’s fun to have a variety, because when you taste sparkling wines back to back, you notice characteristics you may not have otherwise. Which brings me to my next tip!
Tip 2: Provide Tasting Notes
If you’re like me and my friends, our first focus of getting together is always to have a good time! So you can take tasting notes as seriously as you like! But they’re a fun way to encourage conversation about the wines, learn a little bit more about what you like, and also is a great way to remember what your favorites were so you can revisit them later! Without my notes, I’d be lost!
Some things you can think about when you’re tasting sparkling wine:
- How does it look? Is it clear or cloudy? Pale or golden? How big are the bubbles?
- How does it smell? Remember, you don’t need to swirl champagne before smelling it. Does anything come to mind? Apples? Lemons? Florals?
- How does it taste? The moment you’ve been waiting for! Does it taste similar to how it smelled? Different? Do any flavors come immediately to mind? Is it dry? Fruity?
- The #1 Sparkling Wine Tasting Mistake? Forgetting that you don’t need to know a lot about wine to appreciate it! Just like any wine, the whole point is to enjoy it!
Side note: I also personally like to print out the tasting notes provided on the winery website – that way after everyone has tasted the wine and had a chance to figure out tastes on their own, we can compare notes with the experts!
Tip 3: Set the Scene
You certainly don’t need to host your party at the Ritz, but it’s always fun to take a little extra time and put together a fun table for your friends. For my table, I took my inspiration from the pretty peonies and went with a blush and gold theme. Definitely nothing complicated, but it made sitting down to the table that just more fun!
Tip 4: Pick some food pairings!
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on just this topic, and you can find it here! You’ll find easy and delicious food pairing for each of the sparkling wines mentioned here. When I’m hosting an event, I like to keep food prep as quick and easy as possible, so you’ll notice that it takes fewer than 30 minutes to prepare all four recipes.
Tip 5: Have fun!
Pop the bottles, pour the bubbly, and have a good time! It is, after all, a party! Cheers!
Thank you to Gruet Winery for making amazing wines, and sponsoring this post.
I love celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! Maybe it’s all the green, all the good food, all the beer…who knows! It’s just such a fun holiday, and I love that there are so many totally different ways you can celebrate it! I have really fond memories of my mom making traditional Irish dishes and my aunt and uncle throwing fun parties. It’s just all around good!
This year I decides on a really neutral, simple and rustic St. Patrick’s Day dinner inspiration. I wanted it to feel like the kind of dinner you might enjoy in an Irish countryside pub. Delicious, homey and simple.
For the table itself I chose to use really neutral colors, sticking with my everyday tablecloth and a burlap table runner. Then I added little pops of sage green with the napkins and these adorable faux boxwood planters!
Keeping with the neutral theme, I used plain white plates on top of larger glass dinner plates, so the glass plates kind of look like chargers.
And of course, what’s a St. Patrick’s Day party without Guinness! I’ve shared my Guinness Cupcakes and Triple Chocolate Stout Brownies with you already (and Guinness beef stew coming next week!), but had to include it in the tablescape too. I love these Guinness pint glasses, which I actually borrowed from my parents! The shape of them is supposed to be “ideal” for Guinness consumption, which I really know nothing about, but I just think they’re cute!
I almost skipped anything gold on the table, but then I saw these Frans Chocolates Coconut Gold Bars and changed my mind! They look so cute on each place setting, and still keep with the neutral feel of the whole table. And I spy a little Leprechaun stealing the gold! Charlotte was so obsessed with these chocolates and kept stealing them off each place setting. It was so funny!
However you plan to celebrate the holiday, I hope you have a great time! Slainte!
If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I’m a total paper nerd. When I got engaged, the first thing I was excited to plan was my invitations! I’m all about the quality of paper, customization options, and don’t get me started on accessories like envelope liners!
Maybe it’s because of my love of good paper, or my love of a good party, but I love real paper invitations. They help set the mood of the event, get guests excited for the party, and with a physical invitation guests are more likely to remember important details.
I’m always looking for new stationary companies, and recently came across Basic Invite. I honestly can’t believe I hadn’t discovered them before! With a champagne tasting party around the corner, and hopefully many baby showers to plan for friends in the near future, I decided to order some invitations to check them out. After gushing about them to my friend the other day at coffee, I decided to write up a quick blog post on the experience! If you’re planning a birthday, baby shower, wedding – really any type of special event, you definitely should check them out! Especially because on their site right now, they’re offering 15% off with code 15FF51.
A few things stood out to me about Basic Invite:
1) I almost always have a specific color palette to my event, and I loved that I was able to completely customize the colors of the invitation! Usually when you order invitations you get a few limited choices, but with Basic Invite they literally gave me a color wheel. How amazing is that? You can even choose from over 40 colors of coordinating envelopes. For a self-proclaimed paper nerd like myself, this is pretty exciting! They also have coordinating thank you notes for a lot of their invitations, and I am ALL about that!
2) When I decided on the invitation, I was able to order an actual printed sample. That’s important, because all computer monitors are different and one computer’s teal could be another computer’s bright green. If you’re planning a Breakfast at Tiffany’s party, that’s a pretty important distinction. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I admit! So having the option to double check everything from color to wording and spacing is amazing.
3) Ok this might be the coolest part – Basic Invite provides an address capturing system. If you’re planning to send out Christmas cards, for example, you can post a link to your Facebook, Twitter – whatever platform you like, and your friends can enter their addresses there. That would have been so handy when I was planning our wedding and my friend’s recent baby shower – I swear it took me weeks to track down addresses!
They offer all sorts of invitations from the champagne party ones I chose, to wedding invites, to baby shower invitations. Having just planned a baby shower for a friend, and hoping to plan many more in the near future, I got totally lost in this section!
They have so many adorable options, even a special section for baby shower invites for twins! Or these sea themed baby shower invitations! Now I’m dying to host an under the sea themed party. Wouldn’t that also be a cute theme for Charlotte’s second birthday party?? I’m already planning the cake in my mind haha! Since they’re so customizable, I might just do that! Ok and last one: look at these butterfly baby shower invitations. Totally in love!
I seriously can’t wait to order invitations from Basic Invite again!
Happy Friday and first day of February everyone! I’ve spent the last few weeks baking and prepping all things Valentine’s Day, and I’m so excited to share this Galentine’s Day party table inspiration with you. Last year I had a few girlfriends over to celebrate with a fun, casual brunch. That’s what I had in mind as I put this table together. I wanted it to be happy, comfortable and inviting!
Valentine’s Day often revolves around love and romance, and I’m all about that! But I think it’s also fun to use the holiday to celebrate the other kinds of love we have in our lives too, whether it’s love for friends or our families. I wanted this table to be light and bright, steering clear of traditional Valentine’s Day colors like pinks and reds. And you’ll notice there’s not a single heart on the table, either! As I was photographing this, I couldn’t help thinking this would also be a perfect setup for a Mother’s Day brunch or a cute baby shower!
Whenever I’m putting a table together, I always choose one thing to inspire the overall look. Sometimes it starts with a type of food I want to serve, like Greek food leading to an island theme. Sometimes it’s the location of the event. For this brunch, my inspiration started with the Pantone color of the year, which happens to be coral!
I instantly fell in love with these adorable mini faux potted ranunculus in yellow and red! I knew that I wanted a bright floral arrangement since the table runner is a perfect backdrop. These work perfectly, because they spread color all across the table and also tie into the color of the napkins. I also like the price point of these faux flowers, because achieving a similar look with live flowers would have been a lot pricier. Plus now I get to enjoy them forever!
I also really loved these floral plates, because they tie into the overall coral color scheme without being overly matchy. Especially next to the orange napkins and pink water glasses, the colors of the plates compliment the rest of the table and create a more cohesive feel.
Questions? Comments? Leave me a note below!
I hope this post helps inspire you to put together a bright and fun Galentine’s Day party!