Want to have a Valentine’s Day party with family and friends, but have no time to spare? Do you want to invite some of your BFF’s over for a long-overdue gab-fest, on a week night, so need fast and easy ideas to pull it off? It’s your turn to host a club meeting (book club, bunko, etc.), but you’ve forgotten it’s your turn and now the members are texting you for confirmation?
No worries – this easy Valentine Candy and Cookie Buffet will “wow” your family and friends! They’ll think you spent hours and hours planning and preparing when all you did was make a quick trip to the grocery store and walk around your house pulling together red, pink and white treasures for your display!
That’s just what I did the other day. I went to the grocery store and bought the following:
- Red gummy hearts
- Red and white jellied hearts
- Pink, white and red plain M&M’s
- Pink, white and red peanut M&M’s
- Heart-shaped lollipops
- Iced Circus Animal Cookies (because they are pink and white!)
- Strawberry Crème Peeps dipped in Milk Chocolate
Plus I made Sweetheart Pie Crust Cookies!
Then, I pulled out a white tablecloth, put it on my kitchen table and walked around my house gathering things to display my Valentine treats. I found paper napkins in the drawer in just the right colors, even though they didn’t have hearts on them. The heart you see on the napkins in the above photo was added to the picture in photo editing on PicMonkey. I thought by adding the heart to the napkins, it would draw attention to the fact that the napkins don’t have any hearts! Even without hearts, they were perfect for this last minute buffet!
I looked in my cabinets for display dishes. I found several candy bowls that I love, made by the Mud Pie company, that were perfect. I used a silver tray that belonged to my mother for the Sweetheart Pie Crust Cookies. The Strawberry Peeps are on a little hors d’oeuvres plate.
I went out in my garden to look for flowers. But, since it’s the dead of winter, even in Southern California, my choices were limited. But, I found my Kalanchoe tubiflora (a succulent that blooms beautiful, tubular bells in spectacular sunset shades of red, orange, fuchsia, pink) in full-bloom and cut one stem and put it in a small crystal vase. So pretty!
I also found a few red votive candle holders from a rainbow-colored set I owned and added them to the table.
I found cupcake wrappers in my pantry that had hearts on them. “Perfect!” I thought to myself. “I’ll use them as snack cups for the guests instead of plates.”
And, I went around our house looking for books with red covers to add to the table. For no other reason except that they are red! I have a small collection of Danielle Steel novels and several of them had red covers, so rather than mix authors, I just used Danielle’s books. Rather appropriate for a Valentine’s Day gathering, wouldn’t you agree? After all, Danielle is the Queen of Romance novels!
Here are more pictures from my Easy Valentine Candy and Cookie Buffet:
So, don’t let a crazy, busy life mean that you can be a “hostess with the mostess”! Just use the pretty things you already have and run to the grocery store for theme-appropriate treats. In no time at all, you too can throw together an Easy Valentine Candy and Cookie Buffet for your family and friends!
Tootles,
Related Posts:
(other Valentine’s Day posts)
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