This past weekend was my girlfriend, Nicole’s, 40th Birthday.  Her family asked me to help plan/design a wine & cupcake tasting party for her.

I wanted to show you a few simple tricks I did in order to make a great party without all the trouble!

You can find the Wine Tasting Printable Collection in the shop now.

I wanted to create a simple dessert bar for this party….  Understated, yet sophisticated and stylish.

Since the focus was on the wine & cupcakes, we didn’t think it was necessary to have a ton of extra sweets.

I made chocolate covered pretzels, strawberries and raspberries to mix with the wines and cupcakes.

We had Heather McDonnell of the Cupcrazed Cupcake Bar (who won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars) create three mini cupcake flavors to try during the tasting party.

She made Dark Chocolate, Cafe Mocha and Pumpkin.  (by the way… Pumpkin was voted best cupcake and it was UUUHHHH-MAZING!!)

The funny thing, is that Maureen is our dessert specialist, when we put together our dessert bars…. so I had to create desserts that the average dessert dummy could make.

No baking, just decorating!

Ingredients:

1. melting chocolate

2. short pretzels

3. strawberries

4. raspberries

5. sprinkles of your choice

To start, I dipped pretzels in melting chocolate (follow package for melting instructions)

Then added 2 sprinkle types to 2 dozen pretzels, while chocolate was still warm.

I left one dozen un-sprinkled… when the chocolate was hard, I drizzled white chocolate on top.

Next, I dipped the strawberries and raspberries in the chocolate and let the chocolate harden.

Then I drizzled white chocolate on top of these berries as well.

For the dessert bar – I used an old window frame, and stapled  fabric behind the glass.

I strung a happy birthday banner across the window frame.

Remember the poms I showed you how to make out of tissue paper?  I created some poms out of the orange and grey small cocktails napkins.

(4 layers of grey, and two of orange and vice versa)

I unfolded the small cocktail napkins (ends up being 10″ x 10″) to make the large flowers, and cut the napkin pieces (to 5″ x5″) to make the small flowers.

What a great way to utilize supplies you already have… plus it helps keep your colors all the same!

I used wine glasses and glass cake stands to show off all the desserts (with black-eyed peas for lining the glassware)… again, simple & clean and so easy to do!

See below for all the fun party pics!

 

 

Here’s the birthday girl and her hubby, Stu….

Our best friend, Jaci, came in from Ohio to surprise Nicole… so great to have my girlfriends all together!

All in all the party was a total success… you’ll find wine & cupcake scorecards in the collection so you can create this exact party.

This would be a great theme for a bridal shower, engagement party or even just a dinner party….  who doesn’t love to try new wines and cupcakes!!!

Thanks Heather for your fabulous cupcakes – we had sooo much fun trying all of them!!!

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