This year, my pal Mel (@ Mel Makes a Mess Blog) and I decided to co-host a Galentines Brunch + Crafternoon to honour our favourite fictional strong female Lead, Leslie Knope, and as an excuse to spend an afternoon doing crafts with our friends!
Galentines Day, according to Leslie Knope (and me) is the best day of the year! It’s an excuse to hang out with your best gal pals, drink some cocktails, eat breakfast foods, and celebrate friendship! Even though Galentines Day is February 13th, we celebrated a little bit earlier this year, because Galentines day falls on a weekday, (and obviously it’s hard to host a brunch when you work 9-5!)
When Mel and I were initially throwing this idea around, the only thing we knew for sure is that we wanted to do crafts, eat waffles, and make fun cocktails. It was only after perusing through Leslie Knope quotes and Mel coming up with the idea to make these cookies, that this crafternoon quickly turned into an ode to feminism and a celebration of our favourite inspiring fictional and real life women!
HOW TO PLAN A GALENTINES DAY CRAFTERNOON:
If you’re thinking about hosting your own Galentines Day Crafternoon (which you totally should!) here are a few elements to consider:
FOOD
Food is obviously important at a brunch, and you most definitely need some fuel for an afternoon of crafting. A huge shoutout to Mel for making literally all of the food for this event! She’s amazing! For pre-crafts brunch, we had incredible buttermilk waffles with KFC-style chicken, sweet AND savoury toppings, and some flavoured maple-syrups. She also made adorable rosé gummy bears, and some delicious feminist icon heart cookies that were a huge hit! Check out all of the recipes on Mel’s blog.
DECOR
We kept decor pretty simple for this event, with a combination of decor pieces we had on hand, some DIY decor, and some fun valentines-themed dollar store finds.
The table cloth for our craft area was just two sheets of brown kraft paper that I painted white hearts on. Mel also made some pink circle garland with her Cricut, and we had a few fun signs to go with our feminism/Leslie knope theme!
I also bought a really beautiful $15 bouquet of flowers from Walmart (!) that really pulled the decor together. The bouquet was huge, so I split it up into three vases, and placed them in different rooms to really pull all the decor together.
CRAFTS
This was the best part of the whole afternoon if you ask me! Mel and I both really love crafts, so we were the most excited for our friends to make some cool stuff with us! We couldn’t really decide on one craft to do, so we decided to have three different options, with varying difficulty levels. It was also really helpful to have two of us hosting so that we could help everyone with their respective crafts and answer any questions along the way.
Craft option 1: DIY Neon Sign or Sculpture – This one was definitely the most involved craft option, but everyone was really happy with their finished products! It was also REALLY fun to practice making these when Mel came up with the idea. Check out her blog for the tutorial!
Craft option 2: Polymer Clay Keychains – We got the idea for this one from Sugar + Cloth, and followed their DIY Speckled Keychains tutorial. This was probably the most popular craft of the afternoon, because a lot of people hadn’t worked with polymer clay before, and it wasn’t as intimidating as the neon sign!
Craft option 3: Galentines cards! We had a bunch of cardstock, paint, and pre-cut cards from Michaels for the girls to make their own valentines cards. This was a good craft to start while we were waiting for the polymer clay to bake. All of the finished cards were adorable!
DIY GIN + TONIC BAR
None of our friends were very surprised when they walked in to my house and saw this fun little gin bar! Gin and tonics are definitely my favourite, and even more so after recently traveling to Scotland – where gin is definitely having a moment right now! There were gin bars, gin tours, gin-flavoured desserts… gin everything! I was excited for everyone to try some of the new gins we brought back from our trip (plus a few fun flavours we discovered at our local liquor store), so I decided to make a some fun garnishes for the girls to serve with their G+Ts!
What you need for A DIY Galentines G+T Bar
- A variety of gins – the flavoured ones like Dillon’s Rose, and Edinburgh Raspberry were definitely the most popular
- Some kind of juice – we had a glass pitcher of grapefruit juice in case people wanted their cocktails to be a bit sweeter
- Fresh Citrus – lime, grapefruit, and orange wedges
- Fresh Herbs, like Rosemary + Mint
- Strawberry hearts (make these by cutting out the stem, cutting the berry in half, and then making a tiny triangle cut in the top)
- Dried Citrus (steps to make your own below!)
- Valentines Paper straws (from the dollar store!) and Martha Stewart floral toothpicks for the strawberries
- A serving tray or area to set up your bar, and on-theme decor to go with it!
I dried out the citrus fruits the night before, so that they would be ready for brunch the next day. All you need is thinly sliced fruit, a wire rack on a baking sheet, and a little bit of coconut sugar (brown sugar would work too) sprinkled over the fruit. I also used a small heart cookie cutter to cut out some hearts, but these didn’t work as well as the larger rounds because they crisped up a lot quicker. Bake your citrus in the oven at 225 degrees for 2.5-3 hours and then serve them in a cute bowl at your bar!
Overall, we had such a blast hosting this brunch and crafternoon! If you love friends, brunch, and crafts – you should totally host one too! Pop over to Mel’s blog to see some of the specific DIYs mentioned in this post!
Cheers!
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