With three consecutive warm and almost sunny days, it's now feels safe to say 'summer is almost here'. We couldn't help but relocate our asses from the couch into the backyard for a low-setting picnic this past weekend, which I had always wanted to do. Not exactly how I had envisioned in the past or how my INTEREST BOARD ( here ) board screams, we still had a great time putting this all together as a family.
What might and could have been much more spectacular had the situation been normal and I could have stepped out to shop for this, I have little or no complain with what we put together here. Except for the food everything is from around my house. You could call this a result of our shopping adventure at home. We all made a list of things we needed for this set up and then worked as a team to hunt down things around the house. I'm glad the group effort paid off. So, don't worry if you can step out to make an outdoor picnic possible, things that you already own can be repurposed and used as an essential for your picnic set up, just like we did....keep reading!
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The low-setting
We feel blessed to have an outdoor space- we call it our backyard oasis. We moved our rug from our porch to the center of the backyard. The stripe cushion pads that you see are from our patio furniture. The so-called table is actually an old wooden dolly ( last seen here ) that we picked up for free at a local grocery a few years ago. It was a bit worn out and cracked at a couple places but there is nothing that a checkered table cloth can't hide....right? The throw blankets, the cushions, the picnic baskets, the lanterns, the flowers, the reclining chair, everything came from around the house.
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The food
Picnic food is always so fun. We decided to take a break from my cooking and ordered takeout for a change. Many thanks to MINTWOOD PLACE for making our food table so colorful. We ordered their Memorial Day picnic basket for 2 which was more than enough for my family. There was chicken salad, salmon rillettes, grilled aubergine, grilled jumbo prawns over fennel salad, rustic bread and so much more. To add extra color to our food table we brought out some berries, cherries and watermelon. If ordering restaurant food is impossible, home-cooked dishes like quiches, sandwiches, grilled meats, salad, pasta- all of it works and stays well. Cue post for more food ideas.
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The drink
When Riri is around we try to limit alcoholic beverages and hence in addition to the summery mint and lemon infused water, we had watermelon infused tonic water and my DIY Beertini. As the name suggests the watermelon infused tonic water was just some chucks of pineapple floating in tonic water. The beertini is a cocktail that I have been making ever since I was introduced to Hoegaarden Cherry Blossom flavored beer earlier this year. It's just mix of the beer and skinny martini mix and it's the simplest, yummiest, most-feminine two ingredient cocktail that I've ever made.
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The Outfits
Since it was the Memorial Day weekend, we decided to wear blue and coordinated our outfits. We shopped our own closets for our outfits and it was such a breather to see each other in civilian, non-lounging clothes. I have to admit that dressing up, doing your hair and makeup makes such a big difference- both in your mood and body. I even wore my heels for this picnic and I was so pumped....