Winter Cocktail Fete

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake… - Sir Francis Bacon

This winter we gathered some friends and threw a cocktail party at our little apartment.  I love extending the sparkle of the holidays into the New Year to help brighten the darkest days of the year!  We have lots of great things to look forward to this year and this was a fantastic way to kick it off!

For a frosty effect, I pooled together my most sparkly Christmas decorations and my white and metallic everyday items.  This included my ever expanding mercury glass collection comprised of candlesticks, vases, and ornaments.  I used the pieces in little groupings on the food table.  To continue the winter effect into the living room, I created a tall arrangement for the coffee table using found sticks and white carnations.  It was very easy and was inspired by this post from Gibson King!

Outside, we lined the driveway in luminaries to greet guests and lead them to the back entrance.  They were simple to assemble: LED tea lights from the dollar store in white paper favor bags from the party store with some sand from the beach to weight them down.

Our tree features more of my Mercury Glass collection and glittery snowflakes plus some ornaments inspired by our beach side home.  This year I upped the frosty feeling by weaving in white feather boas among the branches - it was a beautiful glowy snowy effect!!

Awhile back I had scooped up some beautiful multi-tiered serving dishes from Home Goods and couldn't wait to use them for a beautiful dessert display.  For this party, I was very excited to use them to create an all winter white Dessert Bar!  I paraded them 3 in a row down the center of a runner so they could double as decoration!

Here are some "Winter White Dessert Bar" Suggestions...

• Sugar Cookies
• Mini Vanilla Cupcakes
• Powdered Donut Holes or Mini Donuts
• Merangues
• White Chocolate Covered Pretzels
• White M&M's
• White Chocolate Truffles
• Kettle Corn

My latest cocktail obsession is St. Germain liquor!  For the feature cocktail of the evening, I poured up glasses of chilled Champagne, topped them off with some St. Germain and dropped in a few raspberries!  The drink was refreshing and a huge hit!  While sipping cocktails, nothing is better in the winter than a cozy fire!  We don't have a fireplace, but my boyfriend was excited to get the bonfire pit going for guests to gather around!