Farewell to Summer Lemon-Themed Party

With a handful of days until fall, a few girlfriends and I decided to give what’s been a wonderful summer a proper farewell with a lemon-themed get-together.

A few key pieces that I always love having at parties: a signature drink, activities for guests, and a take-home favor. In this case, the activities served double duty as the favors. I wanted to share a part of my table with my friends, so I decided to create a mini bouquet bar and a station for making our own limoncello. I stuck with the lemon theme for the signature drink, too, creating an easy bubbly spin on lemonade.

(Jcrew top here, Jcrew midi skirt – similar here, here, and here, Salvatore Ferragamo two-tone flats – similar here and here)

Lemon Raspberry Fizz

2 parts prosecco
1 part lemonade
lemon ice cubes

Wash lemons and cut into thin slices. Place a slice in each ice tray slot with a spritz of lemon juice. Place in freezer for 3-4 hours, or until ice cubes are frozen. Garnish with raspberries and enjoy!

For the bar area, I used one of my silver drink trays that I picked up at West End Antiques Mall in Richmond on a recent trip. You can find similar trays by Reed & Barton here and this pretty number with great raised edges on Houzz. If you decide to go for the hunt, make sure you inspect silver pieces carefully. Use your thumb to rub off some of the tarnish to make sure it isn’t beyond the point of shining. Flip the piece over to make sure there is an engraved stamp. It should have the silver company’s name engraved on the bottom, as well as the material (silverplate, quadruple-plated, and so on).

The gorgeous silver “trophy” is actually a lone piece from a vintage coffee and tea service. It served as the perfect vehicle for my gold and white paper straws (similar here, and great value here). You can find similar sugar bowls on Etsy, like this one. I also personally have a vintage sugar scuttle on my wishlist. I mean, how gorgeous is that?

Champagne flutes are Reidel and carafe is Crate and Barrel.

Since we were all moving around, I filled the table with easy-to-eat finger foods – no forks involved. I stacked pimento cheese sandwiches and Kentucky’s Benedictine sandwiches on two cake stands (similar here and in different sizes). Pro-tip: I layered one cake stand on top of the other to create a tiered server. Tablecloth is Kate Spade (still on Amazon, and similar here).

I also used a combination of Mariposa (platter here) and Beatriz Ball (tray here, dip server here, and bowl here) serving pieces to hold brie fig tarts (phyllo dough sheets topped with brie, fresh Maryland figs from our wonderful friend Nancy, and honey baked for a few minutes), caprese bites, mini fruit tarts, fruit, and veggies.

I fell in love with limoncello on the very last evening of our honeymoon in Rome. Sipping on this lemony liqueur a year later still takes me back to a chaise on the Rome Cavalieri’s terrace! So, I was beyond excited to share this favorite after-dinner drink with my girlfriends. The process, from zesting to corking, was so much fun that I filled another blog post with it! You can read it here.

Our mini-bouquet bar was also a total hit. I chose a handful of colors to work with and picked out flowers within those color families. Bud vases in different sizes, shapes, and colors gave my guests plenty of options to choose from and kept things interesting. I picked these out from various stores around town, antique shops, and vintage shops (similar vases can be found here, here, and here).

A great trick I learned watching Ina Garten is to create a bouquet as you’re putting your arrangement together, constantly turning it to find gaps that need filled. Pro tip: make friends with your florist and always ask for spare greenery (they often throw extra “unusable” sprigs out that make for great pieces to fill in gaps in your arrangements).

Everyone made their own bouquets that captured their personalities perfectly! Each arrangement turned out beautiful and it was so much fun to give a part of the decor to my guests as a fun memory of the afternoon.