I love to entertain and what I enjoy most about hosting get-togethers is the laughter and creating memories. Most of my energy goes into preparing the food and it’s my highest stress point. I am always worried we’re going to run out of food, but we always end up with so many leftovers that we are pushing food out the door with our guests.
A dear friend of mine was expecting her first baby during the pandemic and I wanted to show her love, so I decided to give her a baby shower. Due to COVID, the way people gather has changed and with that change, I found the opportunity to reimagine the way I entertain.
The new and safe way to entertain was to have smaller gatherings outside with social distancing. My back yard was the perfect outdoor space to shower my friend with love while maintaining safe practices. The question was—how do I safely feed our guest. There I was, again, stressed about food.
With every challenge there is a solution—I just had to get creative. My solution? Individual lunch boxes for each guest! This was so brilliant, because it eliminated unnecessary touch points.
The shower’s theme was team boy or team girl. So when purchasing the actual lunch boxes, I wanted to keep the décor neutral. I wanted to buy solid brown boxes, but they didn’t have enough. I had to improvise. I saw they had the same brown boxes, but with gold poke dots. I thought, even better and loved the idea of mixing and matching.
Depending on the size of your party, you can personalize your lunch boxes. For example, I added brown tags and wrote enjoy alternating between blue and pink and added some Baby’s Breath.
I filled the lunch boxes with prepackaged individual foods: a bag of sliced apples, hummus, guacamole, pretzels chips and carrots. Having each meal packaged individually gave my guests the opportunity to take their leftovers home in the box provided and made clean up so much easier!
For dessert, I chose to have individual cupcakes from a local bakery. I went with a local bakery not only to support small business, but because I wanted to serve my guests baked goods from a business who was practicing safe guidelines. I also added individual tags which noted the flavor of each cupcake. I loved having the cupcakes individually wrapped because it allowed our guests to take some home. Another win—not having left over sweets in the house.
What I loved the most about the individual lunch boxes, is that you can take the idea in so many directions. Gourmet sandwiches with a beautiful fruit salad, hot dog with chips or toss salad. Depending on the size, age or type of gathering you can make adjustments.
I am so excited to start implementing lunch boxes into our parties. Actually I can’t wait until our next kid’s birthday party.
Dress Fest & Nest 