Food Ideas | Cooking Ideas | Decor and Entertaining Ideas

	Apple Candles: The next time you have a dinner party, instead of using your normal tapered candles to achieve a cosy atmosphere, try apple candles. Core the apple and place a tea light candle into the hollow opening, the metal around the tea light will prevent the apple from burning and best of all, apples float, which means you can create your very own homemade floating candles.
	Hand Painted Wine Glasses: Add a unique twist to your dinner party, by transforming your ordinary wine glasses into individual pieces of art. Choose a basic design, theme or colour scheme and get painting. You can find glass paints at most hobby/craft stores. Amaze your guests with your endless creative talent.
	A Merry Green Christmas: No doubt, there will be a lot of gift swapping done over the next month. For a greener way of wrapping presents, why not make your own unique gift wrapping, use cloth bags or even pieces of fabric as alternatives to to conventional shop bought wrapping paper. Save and re use the paper from previous Christmas’s.
	Christmas gift ideas Making your own vanilla extract: What better way to to say merry Christmas than a homemade edible Christmas gift? Find an ornate glass jar or bottle, 3 vanilla pods and a cup of vodka, rum or bourbon. Split the pods lengthwise, place them into the bottle or jar, pour the alcohol over the pods, seal tightly, give it a little shake and store in a dark cool environment for at least 8 weeks. Finish it off with a ribbon and gift tag or even a beautiful gift box. Your friends will love the personal touch!
	An Apple Theme Dinner Party A Fresh twist on a dinner party would be to introduce an apple theme, incorporated this theme into both your menu as well as your decorating. There are so many recipes that include apples as an ingredient and you can go wild with the decorating, from using apple table accessories to floating apples in a glass vase as a center-piece. Use red apples for more of a cosy festive atmosphere or switch to green apples for a fresh summery approach. The possibilities are endless!
	Sand Candles At you next dinner party, use coloured sand (the same as your colour scheme) and dress up tea light candles to make flickering lights that are cheerful and fun. Take drinking glasses and fill each glass with different patterns of the coloured sand, then submerge the tea light candle into the top of the glass, being careful not to disrupt your pattern. Your guests will love it.
	Unique Dessert Platter When entertaining your friends and family, why not add variety to your dinner party by having individual dessert platters for each guest. Choose three of your favourite desserts and instead of serving a full portion, for each guest, you can portion out three small servings from each dessert and place them artistically onto a mini platter. Your guests will love the variety.
	Perfect Dessert Idea Make multiples of these scoops-on-a-stick and you won't have to spoon ice cream, one serving at a time, in the middle of a party. Dole out balls onto a lined baking sheet. Insert a craft spoon into each, and place in the freezer. Chill until hardened. Roll scoops in sprinkles, toasted coconut, or crushed nuts or sweets, and store them in the freezer on a freshly lined baking sheet Reference: Martha Stewart
	Ideas for a Table Setting You are having everyone over to your house. Well, a lovely idea would be to make a small colourful Easter egg parcel and attach it with ribbon to the knife, fork and serviette at each setting.
	Create a Cute Recipe Gift Jar . Next time you find yourself unsure of what to buy someone as a gift, why not purchase a jar and fill it with the ingredients of your favorite sweet recipe. Its cute, creative, thoughtful and fun to make!
	Make some Healthy nibbles for your guests. Create a simple snack for a party or an eye-catching offer on a table full of deserts. All you need is some fruit and a kebab stick. An inspiration to eat healthy!
	Display your Flavour Instead of using your traditional salt and pepper cellars, create a delightful centrepiece with your salt and pepper. All you need is salt, pepper and something to shape your pattern with. Items like children’s stencils and cookie cutters work well, or bring out the inner child in you and create your own stencil with cardboard.
	Serving Individual Crudites A fabulous and innovative snack idea at your next gathering would be to serve crunchy vegetables complete with their own dip: buttermilk-peppercorn, roasted pepper and eggplant, or toasted curry. Their bowls - hollowed out baguettes - are meant to be eaten, too.
	Make Flower-Petal Ice-Cubes! At your next gathering, wow your guests when you serve them drinks with gorgeous floral ice-cubes. We suggest small flowers, petals, or herbs such as mint frozen within a block of ice to create the ultimate impact. Be sure to choose petals or flowers that are edible or non-toxic - rose petals, small pansies or mint are perfect choices for the task. Fill an ice-tray no higher than the half way mark with water. Place your chosen petal into each ice block compartment. Place the ice-tray in the freezer for a few hours until the cube is frozen solid. Fill each compartment to the top with water, and then place the tray back into the freezer until it's time to serve your guest.
	Host A Hot Drink Party Why not hold a winter alternative to the summer Garden Tea Party? We suggest holding a Hot Drink Party. Invite your guests to join you in a celebration of winter. A tasty meal option would be a variety of warm soups – think thick tomato, butternut and orange, creamy chicken and corn or sweet-potato soups – served with plenty of fresh homemade crispy bread and butter to go along with the meal. After dinner, serve your guests Glühwein – red wine which is heated and spiced with cinnamon sticks, cloves and sugar. Once your guests’ bellies are full, encourage everyone to sit around a crackling fireplace where you’ll serve them a variety of hot drinks. Also, have a selection of cakes and warm muffins as a dessert option. On the menu would be a selection of coffees – cappuccino, moccacino, latté, macchiato and the ever-popular espresso – as well as hot cocoa and warm malt drinks such has Horlicks. A wonderful addition to this party would be a selection of Hot Chocolates, from White Hot Chocolate to Mint Hot Chocolate, be sure to top each steamy cup off with marshmallows, cinnamon and cream. Remember to have plenty of milk froth on hand too! Your guests will leave your party satisfied and filled to the brim with these wonderful winter warmers.
	Throw a Ice-Cream Sundae Party Invite your friends to a Sundae Party. Ask your guests to fashion their own dessert by providing bowls of assorted toppings like chocolate covered nuts, chocolate shavings, toffee bars, biscuit pieces, chocolate syrup and fruit. Let everyone get creative!
	Dessert Party! Throw a Dessert Party for some of your friends. Ask each friend to bring a different dessert or alternatively, get a professional chef / caterer to create some desserts that will keep your friends talking for a very long time to come!
	Potjie Competition Set a date for a Potjie competition with some friends. Teams must create a Potjie using a selection of ingredients that you supply ie. they will improvise a recipe then and there. Select one or two people to jusge which is the best.
	Bowls of Cherries There is something so sophisticated about eating cherries! Why not serve a delicious bowl of cherries at your next cocktail party or summer lunch.
	Gourmet Cupcakes The best part about making cupcakes is making them look pretty! Play around with different colour icings and sugar decorations and amaze all your friends by serving them at your next bookclub or tea party..
	The Treat Company - Fun Gift The Treat Company in Cape Town makes some great gifts in beautiful packaging. These brightly coloured gum sweets are a fun present to give someone or even just to share with friends.
	Choc Crunchies decorated with lace Buy or bake crunchies with dark choclate icing and tie lace around 2 or 3. This would work well as a small gift for someone to say thank-you or get better soon. Easy and tasty!
	Strawberry Water This is a refreshing change from plain old water. Simply clean and cut a few strawberries lengthways and place in a jug of water. Eventually the water will develop a slight strawberry taste. This can be done with apples, lemons and various other fruits too.
	Serve Ice-Cream in Mini Glass Vases Good presentation makes any food exciting to eat. For this simple idea, you need mini glass or ceramic vases and mini roses which you can get at almost any supermarket. Fill the vase with a delicious strawberry ice-cream and place a pink rose in each one.
	Pot plant name placements Collect some used food tins, clean them out and paint the outside with a colour of your choice. Buy some small plants from the nursery and pot them in the tins and place name cards on each on. A fresh, simple and elegant name placement.
	Minimalistic Centrepiece For this idea, you need the right vase - a small rectangular, shallow vase. Place white pebbles on the botton and fill with enough water to cover the pebbles. Place long slender leaves in each vase (facing the same way) for a beautiful effect.
	Fruit Platter Instead of serving chips and dips, try something different & serve a fruit & nut platter. Make the platter look interesting by using different heights - you can put nuts in small bowls or cups & place the fruit around the bowls. You can even add a biltong stack to create even more variation - see picture below.
	Chocolate teaspoons This is a great idea for a tea party. You need teaspoons and at least 3 flavours of cooking chocolate. Melt the different flavours seperately and dip the ends of the spoons into the chocolate, creating patterns with the different flavours.
	Heart Cupcakes This is a great accompaniment to the chocolate teaspoons above. Serve cupcakes with pink butter icing and decorate with hearts made out of sugar icing. Cute and scrumptious - perfect for a ladies tea party.
	Mini Badges as Name Placements Try and find these mini badges at a stationery store or Cardies. Select something different for each person - something that reflects their personality and attach to a name card. These will also act as fun conversation pieces.
	Biltong Bowls Wrap biltong snapsticks in an African looking ribbon (I have used a Zebra print here) and serve as snacks. This is ideal for a bush/safari type menu. You can even serve the biltong together with dried fruit and nuts. See picture above.
	Organise ingredients If you have limited time & are planning to cook a dinner for friends, prepare the ingredients beforehand & place in ceramic bowls & cover with cling wrap. This will save a lot of time when it comes to actually cooking the dish which means more time for socializing.

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