At the end of the month, my sister Emily’s second baby girl is arriving! We are so excited and decided to have a small get together to celebrate before the new baby makes her appearance. We wanted her “sprinkle” to be more about having a chance for some fun and relaxation before she has a newborn and a toddler, rather than a baby shower event. So we hosted a tropical escape dinner party with lots of pineapples, bright colors, and yummy food and drinks. It was the perfect tropical party and a great night with my sisters and mom!
Even though it was an informal night and no invitation was needed, I decided to make one just because I love pineapples. And I also wanted my sister to have a keepsake from her sprinkle (despite the fact that it’s very unlikely her second child will have a baby book, but hopefully she’ll at least have a memory box to toss it in). I created this watercolor tropical card with a pineapple back side.
Luckily my younger sis is just as crazy about decorations as me, so we put our minds together and came up with a neon pineapple theme. We made pineapple garland from yellow tissue balls from Oriental Trading; we opened each one halfway and stapled strips of green paper for the pineapple leaves.
I found yellow striped wrapping paper and neon tassels at HomeGoods (one of my favorite places), which we used to decorate the side table. I painted the bottom halves of real pineapples with matching neon colors – orange, green, yellow and pink. We finished the tablescape with some other tropical fruit and neon confetti.
Bright flowers went perfectly with our painted pineapples.
We ordered palm tree drink stirrers and pineapple tissue picks to make our menu festive. I also found pineapple cocktail napkins at HomeGoods.
Since my sister cannot (unfortunately) partake in alcohol, we made a tropical mocktail. Our virgin drinks were a combination of mojitos and pina coladas – a creamy yet light mixture of pineapple juice, coconut milk, lime juice, honey and mint.
Since we were having a tropical dinner, seafood seemed like the obvious choice for our menu. So I made a tropical fruit salsa with pan-seared salmon; it was delicious and I promise to post the recipe soon! My sister made yummy pineapple-glazed cocktail meatballs, which we served with coconut basmati rice.
For dessert, we served mango and pina colada water ice and my sister made individual key lime desserts. It was the perfect ending to our tropical party and night of relaxing and chatting. Now I can’t wait to meet my niece!
