A Cosy Evening Under the Stars

I've always absolutely loved hosting little get-togethers and dinner parties for friends and family. I'm not quite sure exactly where my obsession for picnics and parties comes from, but I have a feeling it has something to do with my simultaneous love for a good laugh, a bunch of fairy lights and a hefty slab of cake...  

Anyway, last weekend a few old friends of mine came down to visit me here in Cornwall and, as it was a good excuse to get the board games and paper plates out, I just had to go that one step further and plan a little themed picnic for us to enjoy. 

So, with the help of a hoard of goodies from my fave online party supplies shop, prettylittlepartyshop.co.uk, I put together a cosy 'Under the Stars' styled picnic and of course I just have to show you a few snapshots from our night. 

My main plan for this picnic was to make it look and feel as cosy and 'thrown together' as possible. I don't know about you, but I love those spontaneous and relaxed get-togethers where everyone tries to scramble a 'party' together at the last minute. Those are always the best occasions, so that's the kind of atmosphere I was trying to recreate here. 

Food-wise, pasties were definitely the order of the day. I've yet to find a better picnic food to keep everyone happy!

It was also incredibly handy to have a stack of these kraft food boxes for transporting our food to and from the garden. If you read my post on last year's garden picnic, you'll know that we had a lot of food and it caused us a great deal of trouble getting it all down to the garden and clearing everything up afterwards!

So having these cute (but easily disposable!) East of India paper bags and twinkly kraft plates + napkins made the whole process so much easier. I can't recommend disposable party gear enough when it comes to occasions like this- the last thing you want to do as a hostess is spend a large chunk of time carting various platters of food around and then doing the subsequent washing up!

The decor wasn't all about practicality though- as soon as I saw these round white balloons with their ivy garlands and these huge navy balloons on Pretty Little Party Shop's site, I knew I had to get them! They are so so pretty in real life and, although they were quite a fiddle to inflate (shout out to my pal Jack who spent a good hour trying to get them to stay buoyant!) I think the overall effect is marvellous and the addition of a few balloons really set the scene.

Sticking with the starry theme, these Constellation notebooks by Nikki Strange on Etsy were a lovely little addition and made great party favours for my friends to take home!

We also had these insanely cute Meri Meri Shooting Star tattoos but never actually got round to trying them before it got dark. However, I do think those tiny gold stars would be so sweet as a little wrist or ankle tat!

As it got dark really quickly that evening, it was great to have a few candles dotted about. These little French dairy jars were the perfect size for holding a citronella tealight and I'm pretty sure they kept going all night!  

To finish the evening, we had to round things off with a scrummy chocolate cake. If you can make the cake-eating bit of a party any better, we found a few golden cake sparklers certainly added to the occasion! 

A quick recommendation for lighting these- grab a lighter or one of those food torches to get the sparklers going all at the same time. We found them a little bit difficult to light with matches alone!

And that's it! I hope you've enjoyed this little insight into our cosy evening under the stars. Let me know if you're planning on having a summer picnic soon, or if you've had one and you have any tips! I'd love to hear them in the comments below.

In the meantime,
All the love,

Siân x