We wanted to celebrate summer before it’s over and so we hosted a cocktail/mocktail party this weekend.
I love summer. And I love my backyard deck with its seating and umbrellas, and visiting birds, and pots of flowers, and water feature. And summer is the perfect opportunity to host a casual cocktail party that can spill into outdoors spaces.
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The Menu
The prime cocktails were served by the pitcher and included my FAVORITE Peach Sangria, and Classic Mojito’s made with mint from container garden. I also had on hand white and red wine, Prosecco, club soda, and Aperol just in case someone wanted a spritzer.
An offering of non-alcoholic classic summer beverages included lemonade and iced tea.
I was inspired in the menu development by my recent visit to The Fountain (you can see more about The Fountain soda shop HERE). And so I decided that in addition to the other beverages, I would create a fun dirty soda bar.
“Dirty Soda” is a drink with a base of any soda embellished with the addition of flavored syrup(s) and often a splash of flavored or plain creamer.
For our Dirty Soda Bar, I bought six flavored syrups, 6 flavors of soda, two flavors of creamer, and an assortment of garnishes including maraschino cherries, pineapple wedges, lemon, lime, and orange slices.
Here are a few of the guest-made choices!
In addition to beverages, I put together some of my favorite summer nibbles.
Syrah Toscano cheese and salami slices served with rosemary raisin toasts
Blue cheese with honey to drizzle on pita crackers
Homemade crostini (and rice crackers for our GF guests) served with our favorite 5-minute parmesan dip
Classic humus served with a platter of pita and veggies
Strawberry crostini with whipped ricotta and balsamic glaze
Mini phyllo cups filled with apricot chicken salad
BLT cups - the cups are formed form bacon woven and baked over upside down mini muffin cups and then filled with chopped iceberg and tomatoes dressed with mayonnaise
And finally, a trio of mini skewers:
caprese (cherry tomato/mozzarella/basil/balsamic drizzle)
cantaloupe balls and prosciutto with balsamic drizzle
watermelon cubes, mint, feta cubes topped with grated lemon and olive oil
The Tablesetting
I made a center arrangement and 4 mini arrangements to scatter around the table from brightly colored grocery store flowers (shout out to Trader Joes for amazing and inexpensive flowers! They are also my go-to for flowers for photo shoots)
I had pretty green and ivory scalloped (of course!) paper napkins in my stash.
I used 3 different sets of small 6” plates I had.
Everything was finger food, so no forks were needed, but I did buy some long handled teaspoons for the soda bar.
I have a rather extensive collection of stemware I got from a restaurant that our church bought when it closed. They left behind an attic filled with dishes and stemware that we had to clean out for our renovation, so I kept an assortment of some of the more interesting pieces couldn’t be donated.
The soda bar was set up on a chest in the corner of the dining room. Adjacent to the chest I used a large galvanized tub on a stand that I filled with ice to keep the soda, prosecco, Aperol, and wines chilled.
I used a set of extra tall glasses for the dirty soda bar. I also use a trifle bowl as an ice bucket with a silver scoop, and a set of sundae dishes to hold the various garnishes.
I bought little paper umbrellas just for fun, and pastel striped paper straws to add to the soda bar.
Serving dishes, as always, were a mix of various platters trays, and pedestals from my collection. Varying heights is an important trick to making a table arrangement look interesting. To that end I stacked two pedestals for the ‘sandwich’ items, used trays for the cheeses, crudité, and the mini skewers, and a square pedestal for the strawberry crostini.
Glasses, carafes, and pitchers were gathered on trays.
I printed labels for the carafes, pitchers, and sandwiches on cardstock.
And I created a sign for soda bar with some suggested recipes to get guests started!
Here are links to some of the ingredients I purchased for this party (click on image for link):
The weather turned out beautiful and everyone had a great time. It was a fun evening with a group of friends and family from various corners of my life!
It’s always 5 o’clock somewhere!
