Fiesta Themed 100th Birthday Party

We catered a very special birthday party for a gal who turned 100 years young! She loves Mexican food and music; so naturally her family decided to throw her a big fiesta to celebrate her special day!

 

Together with the birthday girl's family we planned a colorful color palate and picked an appropriate menu for the occasion. We arranged for their rentals through A Rental Connection and helped them decide on what special drink should be served for the day. Of course, we picked margaritas!  

Here are some pictures for your inspiration! 

 

Don't the tables look pretty and colorful! The host arranged for the centerpieces herself. They bought dollar store frames and painted them in various pretty bright colors and filled them with various pictures of the birthday girl throughout different stages in her life. They also rented serapes and placed cute small maracas and sombreros around the center of the table for a fun touch. 

We also loved how the host filled the patio with "papel picado" (the pretty colorful mexican tissue paper banners) and bright pom poms! 

For everything related to food and drinks we provided special touches to go in theme with the hosts decor (which we discussed before hand to make sure we coordinated!). We went to Downtown Los Angeles into the Olvera Plaza and found lots of cute things to use for this party. Among them we found authentic "papel picado" in different sizes as well as sombreros, tiny serapes, Mexican dreidels, small maracas, and beautiful fabric that reminded us of Mexican serapes. 

For the bar, we added papel picado and designed a menu that paid tribute to Mexican bingo (La Loteria). 

 Ok so how fun is that patron bottle and corona bottle at the bar below! We had these empty bottles from a previous event and thought it would be so cute to use them as flower vases for the bar! A great way to up-cyle something that would have otherwise been thrown out! We also added some paper straws - because who doesn't like a colorful straw with their drink?

The host purchased these pretty colorful plastic margarita glasses at party city. We think they added a fun pop of color and made drinking the margaritas more fun!

For the bar, we had our captain and bartender Anne make lime, strawberry and mango margaritas. We also served beer, wine and soft drinks. The host provided all of the drinks and liquor. We made fresh strawberry and mango puree at our kitchen for the flavored margaritas.

 The margaritas looked soo good! There were some guests who didn't drink so Anne made plenty of virgin margaritas too, they were like a delicious icy fruit smoothie - even the kids loved them! Especially on a warm day like the one we had.

What also made the atmosphere very fun for this party was that many dressed in the spirit of the theme. The host even had serapes, sombreros, and mustaches for everyone to use.

Also adding to the fun atmosphere was a very talented trio playing the birthday girl's favorite music. Their name is Trio Chapala - the owner's name is Lazaro and is very kind! They don't have a website but they can be reached by phone at 323-683-1779. They sounded amazing! We will have a video uploaded for you to see and hear them on our facebook page!

The birthday girl danced with her son, she was so happy and doesn't even look 100!

Now to the food! We had a cocktail hour where we served our mango & brie quesadillas with fruit salsa.

And a newer addition to our menu, mini pork tamale bites! We served these with a ranchera sauce for guests to dip them in. Of course they were a hit!

For dinner, the family selected our soft taco bar with shredded chicken and beef as well as lots of toppings and warm corn and flour tortillas. We also included pinto and black beans, spanish rice, cheese enchiladas, a tossed green salad with black beans and corn with cilantro dressing as well as fresh fruit.


How great does the buffet look? We provided all the linens and decor for the food including the flowers. We also added the celebrate banner and papel picado on the wall for a pop of color!

The tiny papel picado was so cute! We had to buy it when we saw it and we tied it to some bamboo skewers to stick in our flowers the guests loved all the details!

For the flowers, we went to the LA Flower Market of course and selected lots of different bright flowers.

Our captain and creative director Rebecca and our server extraordinaire Giselle ready to fill your plate!

Here's a closer look at the food:

 Cheese Enchiladas with Black Olive Garnish

 Tossed Green Salad with Corn & Black Beans - We served this with Ranch and our Cliantro Dressing pictured below.

 Shredded Beef

 Shredded Chicken

 Our Pinto Beans, Spanish Rice and Black Beans

We had lots of different toppings! Gucacamole, Green Onions and White Onions (pictured below), Sour Cream, Shredded Cheddar Cheese, Salsa Verde, Cilantro, Chunky Salsa, Diced Tomatoes and Shredded Lettuce. We also included our Home-Made Tortilla Chips.

Here's one more picture of the buffet!

We made the food labels - we thought it would be a great idea to use Mexican Loteria cards as our inspiration!

The host provided lots of different desserts and birthday cake of course! We helped her arrange them and we provied the pretty colorful blue linen and made a dessert menu.

Everyone had a great time and we had an even greater time catering this event. It's events like this that help us to look at life with lots of appreciation!

DIY: Round Paper Fans!

We love pretty and easy do-it-yourself projects! This one will help spruce up any space you are using for your event! These paper fans also go by paper rosettes and can be found at craft stores like Paper Source or Michael's to purchase. If you want to save some money and have an array of colors and patterns to choose from then make them yourself! We'll show you all the steps in today's blog post!

 

Let's get started!

First to make the large paper fans you will need:

12"x12" Paper
A Paper Trimmer OR Scissors
Scoring Board OR Your Hands will do just fine!
Hot Glue Gun with Hot Glue Sticks

To make the large fans...

which will be 12" in diameter we need 3 pieces of cardstock or paper in the same color/pattern.

Trim the edges of your paper if there is a barcode edge like ours. If not then start folding or scoring your paper into an accordion with spacing at every 1".

Once your three pieces are folded like this, fold them in half. This is what you'll end up with - look at the pic below!

Use your glue gun to join the centers together first, then glue the edges together and join them!

At this point, once you're almost done gluing if you want to hang your fans instead of taping them to a wall we recommend gluing a string or a very thin wire (like floral wire) to this center part before gluing it shut. This way you can nicely hang your fans.

To make the smaller fans...

Which will be 6 inches in diameter use 1 piece of 12"x12" card stock cut into 4 pieces.

Here are our squares!

Fold each square into an accordion and glue the centers like we did with our large fans!

Again, glue your edges together to form your fan!

This is what it looks like when it's all done!


Hope our picture explanations have been easy to follow! Show us your creations! Hashtag #henriscatering on Instagram!


We hope to have some free printables up on the blog from the bridal shower we planned and designed for your use very soon! Keep checking in with us! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay posted!