My Boho Outdoor Party (On A Budget)

You guys know how I love to throw a party right?  It’s totally just my thing.  It makes me happy.  Except when it’s for myself of course.  Somehow then it just becomes a lass and I feel like I’m spending money on something that doesn’t really have to happen.  Then I feel guilty.  Then I don’t do anything.

BUT NOT THIS YEAR!

This year I gave myself a budget and strict rules.  It was simple really, I was not allowed to buy anything towards decor (everything had to either be borrowed, repurposed or in my house already) and I wasn’t allowed to spend over R3k on food and drinks (we provided all food and drink).

Let’s talk food…

To do this I made the party at 8 – then people wouldn’t expect a full supper.  But I had enough food that they could totally fill up should they need to.  Now there are obviously ways in which you could lower this budget drastically – I provided a lot of meats and pre-made things from Woolies because I knew I wasn’t going to have time to make it all myself.

 

On the table…

In the end we had 4 punnets of strawberries, 1 large punnets of sliced pineapple, 1 punnet of rosa tomatoes, 1 punnet of blue berries, 1 punnet of small naartjies, 1 jar of olives, 1 jar of gerkins, onion marmalade, fig preserves, 3 tubs of hummus, 2 cheese trays, 2 boxes of salticrax, 1 box of garlic crackers, 1 box of tuc biscuits, 2 french loaves, 2 trays of the italian meats, 1 tray of charcoal grill ham, 2 packets of biltong, 1 large packet of almonds, 2 trays of mini burgers, 2 trays of barbeque chicken kebabs and 2 trays of moroccan chicken pieces.

For dessert…

On the tray for dessert we had 1 large tray of sliced pineapple, 2 bags of chuckles, 2 punnets of raspberries, 2 bars of 70% chocolate, 1 box of mini brownies, 6 mini pecan nut pies, 6 mini lemon meringues, 1 packet dried apricots, 1 packet chocolate swirl mini biscuits.

Out of all these things the only thing that I would have done differently is maybe left out the onion marmalade (R50 and no one really ate it), and done 2 trays of the hummus instead of 3.  That’s the only things that were actually left at the end of the party which is totally winning.  All in all the food cost me R2 300 but could have been less if you made some of it yourself or shopped around at other stores (which I didn’t do mainly because of the quality and time factor).

Also there was chocolate cake.

Drinks…

This is where you could easily save.  We prefer to have everything supplied for our parties, but most people don’t mind bringing along a bottle of something with them.  In this case I bought 4 bottles of Diemersfontein (my favourite wine), 2 Lady Warwick Cab Sav, 2 other white wines I can’t remember, 4 6 packs of Windhoek and the same amount of Savannahs.  In hindsight I would have bought 2 more bottles of the wine and maybe only 2 packs of the beer and Savannah.  I spent R1300 on drinks, which pushed me slightly over budget.

I also made some awesome flower ice that is now going to be a permanent feature in my home.  I love that it just adds so much pretty to your drink or ice bucket!

OK, enough about food, tell me about that scarf tent!

I’ve had this idea ever since I saw it on Pinterest forever ago.  You need to tie a whole bunch of scarves together to make a tent.  Sounds easy and it is (despite how confused I get about the whole thing in the video haha).

We had a huge debate as to weather to do it in our garage or do it outside.  Seth pushed me to do it outside because that’s what I have always wanted (and let’s be real it would look way nicer than in the garage!).  He was SO right and I couldn’t have done it without his help!  He made exactly what I had in my head come to life.  We used every single scarf that I had in my cupboard and then raided my mother in laws cupboard.  She has SO many beautiful scarves and it worked out really well.  We also found every single blanket and pillow in our house (and my moms) and layered them on the floor so it wouldn’t be totally uncomfortable sitting out there.

The end result was…

Pretty freaking awesome huh?

The pictures really just don’t do it justice AT ALL.  Which is sad.  But what can you do?!

We brought out the heater and carefully placed it in one of the corners.  A big hit of the night was that the whole tent didn’t catch on fire.  I’m still quite chuffed about that haha.  And as a person who hates to be cold, I added some extra balnkets for people to use should they feel the need to warm up.

Another one of the pieces that I loved was that the girls let me spray their hula hoops silver.  Then I raided my mother in laws garden and took a whole bunch of ivy to wrap it around the hula hoops.

I think the end result was easily my favourite thing besides the scarf tent.  The initial idea was to hang it on the wall about the drinks table or something but that didn’t really work.  Instead we wrapped battery operated fairy lights around them and hung them in the tent.  They looked great!  Made it very Mid-Summer Nights Dreamy 😉

As is becoming the norm, I made a little video of the set up etc of the night.  Unfortunately when the party was actually on I was more worried with enjoying myself and talking to everyone than taking videos, but you get the just of the whole thing right?

What do you think of these videos?  Do you watch them?  Should I keep doing them?

Then there are a few extra pictures of the night.  Slightly blurry and weird, but it was really hard to take decent pictures in the dark.