Karaoke & Cards Vintage Victorian Cocktail Party
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Whether it's books, baking, or BBC specials; I do love the English for their teacups, scones, and old school stories! So as my spring and summer came to a close and I returned from my different travels and celebrations, it was time to host my own to start off the party and holiday season in the best fashion, with a British inspired ball!
So I rolled up my sleeves and started crafting, cooking, and cocktail experimenting to create the perfect party with vintage Victorian vibes, then had my guests dress in the best British inspired outfits they could find in their closets. We all gathered in my floral bedecking home for an evening of fun, food, and favorite cocktails; featuring two of the most common enjoyments of days gone by, singing for my musical guests on my silk flower stage and a basement of cribbage, chess and playing cards for everyone else!
DECORATIONS & DETAILS
For any event, I love going all out on my decorations with one big centerpiece item, and for this party it was on the backdrop for photos as well as my karaoke area, my Hanging Wisteria Fairy Light Photo Backdrop. This beauty took hours of twining my three different sets of fairy light curtains into my many beautiful floral taped silk wisteria blooms I purchased from Afloral, but the effect was well worth the effort for giving a Bridgerton-esque gorgeous glowing backdrop for all my singers! In fact I loved it so much, I’m now securing all the lights and flowers together for a flower curtain to hang in my office!
But this beautiful backdrop was only the start of the florals for this fête. I have so many reusable blooms from previous projects and parties, this was the perfect party for finding new ways to display and decorate with my old favorites and to use them in all new ways! For my karaoke area, wooden and silk flowers made delightful Tea Cup Mini Centerpieces to be placed around candleholders on cocktail tables, while my extra greenery and filler flowers found homes in my basement card room in some mismatched Blooms and Buds Wine Bottle Centerpieces. To accent these bottles, as well as make some fun spooky decorations for October, the end of my empty wine bottles were used to make a set of Sealing Wax Wine Bottle Candle Holders, perfect for adding a little ambience lighting in a vintage victorian style, while giving me reusable candle holders to use in my future events.
But flowers didn't just make decorations, they were even included in my outfit too! For my blushy pink sundress, my Wooden Flower Accessory Clips easily clipped onto the neckline of the dress and in bunches of my pinned hair, giving me the perfect ballroom style with some 3D floral details!
STATIONERY & PAPERIE
The next party details to feel the floral love were all my stationery and paper projects! Mismatched florals were the name of the game, inspired by my love of mismatched tea sets and giving me a great outlet to play with patterns in an affordable way. All my patterned paper details were made from the same pack of floral scrapbook paper I found shopping and my favorite patterns of the sets were grouped for my different paperie projects.
First, my favorite floral patterns were used to create my own custom sets of Personalized Wax Seal Patterned Paper Playing Cards, giving all my card tables signature decks for the occasion like a fancy British gaming club! My next set of favorite papers were used in inviting all my favorite people with my homemade Vintage Victorian Party Invitations, where I made custom Patterned Paper Envelope Liners and Invitation Mats so that each of my guests got my favorite floral pattern for them, but with a consistent invitation for all! The end of my patterned papers found their way into Wax Stamped Wine Menus in the basement and menus for the sweet and savory snacks I displayed in the kitchen, completed with a simple and beautiful signature cocktail menu featuring the mixed drinks of the evening.
This party also gave me the perfect chance to dive into a crafting niche that I haven’t gotten to use since my Zodiac Summer’s Eve party last fall, creating wax seals in a variety of styles for all my projects! My Pressed Flower Seals bedecked menus and magnets, while my Marbled Wax Seals were the perfect accent to my Vintage Victorian Party Invitations. Even Simple Wax Seals found their place as the perfect finishing touch for my Patterned Play Cards as well as for a fun favor for guests to take home!
MENU
While all my menus were bedecked in blooms, a twist on traditional tea treats was a must for this Victorian party, so I made the bulk of my sweets and savories the traditional style of afternoon tea: sandwiches, cakes, biscuits, and scones! For all of these bakeables I got my recipes from my favorite baking blogs, Sally’s Baking Addiction, so while I will list and link the recipes below, I encourage you to go through all her recipes to design your own menus, there are so many choices and I always get delicious and reliable results with all the recipes of hers I try!
For the sweet treats of the evening, I went for hand cut square tea cakes featuring a variety of icings and fillings along with a duo of Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Scones that would follow my friends home in their favor boxes! Just like the scones, I chose to do a duo of tea cakes with some fall flavors, a Burnt Sugar Cake filled with its signature burnt sugar icing and topped with Spiced Chai Buttercream and a more traditional Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream topped with cream cheese icing, which just so happens to be my personal spooky season favorite!
With many vegetarian friends in the crowd, I split my savory sandwiches and baked goods between two large tea trays, one for the carnivores and one for the veggie lovers among us! On the vegetarian tray, the bottom layer was lined with caprese sandwiches with Rosemary Focaccia, followed by some traditional cucumber sandwiches and topped with some whimsical mini Cheddar and Herb Biscuits. For the meat eaters? Those same caprese sandwiches, but topped with prosciutto, where the perfect hearty snack but the most beloved was my take on a tea sandwich featuring the Hot Crab Dip I made for my Midnight Masquerade New Years Eve Party, sandwiching the filling between cheddar lined baguette slices and baking them in the oven for the perfect crowd pleaser! My favorite of the tiers had to be the top, with some Bacon and Cheddar Scones topped with smoked salt my friends brought me back from their travels!
COCKTAILS & PARTY BARS
I didn’t just use smoked salt in the scones, but also in crafting a whole new signature cocktail for this party inspired by one of my favorite Victorian themed shows, Bridgerton! For those that are fans of the books or Netflix series, a bee is a big symbol throughout the series, so I just had to theme and name my Smoked Honey Bourbon Iced Tea after my favorite bee fact! When you move bees from place to place, you use smoke to put them to sleep, so my themed drink was fittingly called the Sleepy Bee!
While I made a new drink just for this event, I wanted to bring back some old favorites that people had loved from previous parties, and just like the first time they were adored by all! The London Lemon Old Fashioned returned from my Midnight Masquerade Party while the second time crowd favorite of the evening, the Limoncello Citrus Gin and Tonic, had to be remade twice because of how fast we ran out of it! The welcome cocktail of the evening I threw in for my own nostalgia of when my blog first began, with the first drink I ever made being given as pink colored shots, the Kinky Lemon Drop!
Along with all these custom cocktails, I like to give my guests another less alcoholic option, so for this fete my card room hosted a small wine bar, which gave me the perfect chance to use some of my Pressed Flower Self Adhesive Seals to create my own custom Wax Stamped Wine Lists, which easily bedecked all my game tables and the wine bar itself. For some simple salty snacks to enjoy, the wine bar featured a little pun of my own while giving an easy food option downstairs, a fish and chips snack tray featuring themed chips and candies for fun festive snacking!
GAMES & ACTIVITIES
But food and drinks weren’t the only themed fun to be had, even the entertainment of the evening was full of the feel of my favorite Jane Austen style books! Just like in old dinner parties, musical guests had the choice of singing for the group on my most recent and beloved anniversary gift, my home Karaoke Machine! If singing wasn’t quite their tune, they could retire to the basement that was fashioned as a custom card room, where cribbage and chess reigned supreme while guests played their hands using my custom made Personalized Wax Seal Patterned Paper Playing Cards. What my careful two room preparations turned into with my modern crowd was perfection, for what actually happened was that guests arrived and all went downstairs after welcome cocktails for the largest group cribbage war I’d ever witnessed, only to move en masse to the karaoke lounge where they all fought to sing their favorites until the wee hours of the morning!
GUEST FAVORS & GIFT BOXES
At the end of many hours of merriment, I sent my friends home with hangover bags with British flair, a Tea & Scones Gift Box featuring all the necessities for an easy breakfast in the morning! Loose earl grey creme tea that had been used in the cocktail recipes of the evening was housed in Vinyl Labeled Windowed Tea Bags, paired with a set or Honey Stick Favors tied with custom Hexagon Favor Tags to sweeten their tea along with a mystery scone to munch on! And while I love giving breakfast boxes, I had to include a little favor to remember the evening by. So in true wax seal style, I finished each favor box with a Wax Seal Magnet, packing each bundle in a Wax Stamped Gable Gift Box that, like my guests' invitations, was bedecked with a Marbled Wax Seal to complete the evening.
With all my travels in the spring and summer it took until fall to have my floral inspired singing soiree; but it was certainly worth the wait as my guests devoured all the food, drank all the drinks, and sang their hearts out for hours. There was no better way to end my summer of fun and get ready for all the parties and holidays of the coming colder months ahead!