Food Scent

The most obvious way to activate scent at a party is by food. BUT, not just any food! It should be food that permeates through the air and entices your guests to want to eat. Below are a list of foods I would recommend making right before your guests arrive:

-Cookies (snicker doodle, chocolate chip, sugar to name a few)
-Cake/pie
-Popcorn
-Curry chicken
-Blueberry muffins/pancakes
-Bacon & eggs

When you make these types of foods for parties guess what you are also doing besides activating scent? You are also activating TASTE! See how the five senses work together?!

I hope now you have a better understanding of all the ways in which you can activate scent. Stay tuned on how to activate the other senses; feeling and hearing!

Easter Party

To finish off this week's lesson on taste, I want to introduce you to a party that features EVERYTHING we have talked about thus far to activate taste: good food/drinks fitting to your theme, spelling it out for your guests (ie: labels on your food), and dressing up your food. Below, you will find a party from Wants and Wishes. I thought, how fitting to feature an Easter party since Easter is around the corner. This Easter party is one for the books! Let's walk through how Wants and Wishes successfully activates taste for this party.

Right off the bat, Wants and Wishes picked a high and low focal point like I discussed in my blog, How to Say Thank You to a Group with $30. Wants and Wishes did this with the center piece being a creative carrot bowl as the low focal point, and the 'Happy Easter' banner as the high focal point.

Focusing on the food and drinks, where do we begin?! When we think of Easter, we think of chocolate, jelly beans, Easter eggs, and pastel colors like lavender and mellow yellow to name a few. Wants and Wishes activates taste by playing with that theme.

By labeling some of the treats this too was tastefully enticing!

Above all else, Wants and Wishes did an excellent job at dressing up food & drinks!

Wants and Wishes did such a great job of showcasing how to activate taste and if you would like to find out where to get some of the personalized labels and decorations Wants and Wishes used for their party go to Wants and Wishes blog. I hope this week you feel a little bit more comfortable in just one of the ways you can plan a successful event for your guests by activating taste! Our next lesson coming up is how to activate sight!

STAY TUNED!

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Dress Up Time!

As we start to wrap up this week's lesson on activating taste, I hope you are beginning to grasp how pertinent good food and beverages can enhance your guests' experience. So far we have learned that you can activate taste simply by the quality of food and drinks provided, and you can activate taste by spelling it out to your guest (ie: labels on the food/drinks). But did you know you can activate taste by merely DRESSING UP YOUR FOOD?

Adornments/decorations on and around your food is one of the best ways to directly activate taste without even putting a morsel of food/drinks in the guests' mouth! Let's see some examples in which dressing up food/drinks was done!

Abby from, Style Me Pretty, does a great job of dressing up her pink drinks at her daughter's birthday party by matching the pink drinks with “YUM!” drink stirrers and pretty pink straws!

Another great way to DRESS UP your food is with toppers! My favorite cupcake toppers come from The TomKat Studio where they make and feature great cupcake toppers. Check them out and consider using them for your next party!

Taste Test

When you see this image, what are some of the first things that come to your mind? I am willing to bet that you are not having a very positive experience with the above image. Why? Well, it DOES NOT ACTIVATE YOUR TASTEBUDS. Seeing the above food combination is enough to make you resort to vegetables for dessert instead!

My point in that photo is to show you how important the activation of taste is when going through an experience, especially at an event. If the food or drink does not taste good, then it puts a bad taste in your mouth (literally) and otherwise negatively alters your experience whether for that moment in time or for the remainder of the event.

The BEST way to activate taste is to spell it out for your guest. No, seriously SPELL IT OUT. When I write "Chocolate covered strawberries" what picture is painted in your head?

The picture you have painted in your head of "Chocolate covered strawberries" has now subconsciously made your mouth water.

MAGIC ;-)

Kendall did a great job of "spelling it out" at her "Hot Dog! The Bachelorette is Back!" Party. The party was appropriately themed to reflect Kendall and her girlfriend's new philosophy on men and hot dog condiments, inspired by Jillian from the show 'The Bachelorette'. Her philosophy:

“Ketchup guy is a good, strong, loyal, loving guy. He loves his mom and talks to her several times a week. Sauerkraut guy is the bad boy who they all go for. The onion guy – they all love him, but he’s never going to get married. And the mustard guy, that’s the guy who they all want to settle down with, because he’s part ketchup, part sauerkraut.”

Let's take a look!

Spelling it out is that simple! You can get beautiful card stock in any color or pattern at Hobby Lobby or Michaels, making sure the color white is somewhere in the mix. From there, cut out the colored or patterned cardstock into whatever shape you desire and cut the same shape out in a white color (a little bit smaller). Glue the two card stock shapes together with the white cardstock shape on top. If you want to be quick and simple, with a sharpie, write in whatever description you want for whatever food or drink you're describing. If you want it to look more clean, use a computer to write your label description and then cut it out into the shape you want.

Done and done :-)

CANDYLAND Birthday Party!

Continuing on with our lesson on activating TASTE, I bring to you one of the greatest examples of activating taste at an event; the Candyland Birthday Party for Max Sutter, son of Bachelorette couple Trista and Ryan. Max Sutter celebrated his first birthday in style!

The following photos of the event were retrieved from the brains behind this masterpiece of a party, Hostess with the Mostess!

Let's step inside CANDYLAND and see how great the activation of TASTE was implemented!

If you're going to have a CANDYLAND Birthday Party, well you must have CANDY and this was something that the party planners did a great job of. Rather than throwing candy around, Hostess with the Mostess creatively presented the candy in such a way that made you feel overwhelmed with options! What I loved the most about their presentation of the food, was that they kept in mind their audience; little children. They did not simply throw candy in an open bowl. They made it truly feel like a candy store (or candy land...lol) by placing the candy in jars!

Not only could you find the candy in cute jars (which you can find at Target or Michaels) but Hostess with the Mostess also creatively used them as both a food option and as a decorative piece when they placed it as a centerpiece.

On top of the plethora of candy, they even had scrumptious chocolate cupcakes that they creatively topped with lollipops! So cute!

The individually wrapped lollipops were definitely a nice touch to all of the candy they offered. If you would like to make your party look more exclusive, you too can have lollipops that are individually wrapped. Simply buy plain lollipops from Michaels as well as candy wrapping from Michaels and add a cute personalized sticker that says the event name onto the lollipop and you've just created a cute way to make your party look that much more exclusive.

I hope you enjoyed reading how the Hostess with the Mostess activated TASTE at the Sutters' son's 1st Birthday Party! Now, it's your turn! Keep reading to find more examples on this week's lesson of activating taste!

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Beautiful Flowery Wedding Dessert Table

This weeks lesson is all about activating TASTE so my featured event that does just that is a beautiful wedding dessert table photo shoot by Erin Volante Floral and Portraits by Lucinda. I stumbled across this gorgeous dessert table via the Blowout Party Blog and had to walk you through just how this event successfully activated TASTE.

Dessert = SWEET so of course, this dessert table made its sole focus on sweet things. Pictured above we have cupcakes served with Effervé. Effervé is a product line of natural sparkling French lemonades under Eurobubblies Inc.

My favorite part of this photo shoot is how the dessert table included its own lovely rendition of an ice cream dessert toppings bar! MMmmmm!

What is a wedding dessert table without the wedding cake?! The peach colored wedding cake tied the whole dessert table well. Peach served as the best pastel color to use amongst the magenta and white color scheme.

Every dessert on this table makes me salivate and I can only image how delicious these basic, yet beautifully displayed desserts were.

Thanks for reading my featured event that successfully activates TASTE. To find out more about this beautiful garden wedding dessert table photo shoot go to Blowout Party the Blog! Keep reading to explore other parties that activate TASTE this week!

Vendor Credits:

Flowers: Erin Volante Floral

Photography: Portraits by Lucinda

Lanterns: Something Borrowed

Cakes and Cupcakes: Rebekah Foster

Hair and Makeup: CaraSue Hall

LESSON #1- PART 1: Activating TASTE

In Lesson #1 we discussed the importance of activating all five senses during an experience. Those five senses were seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling (touch).
This week we are going to focus on TASTING.

Though taste is the weakest of our five senses, I think we can all agree that we find food and drinks at a party to be one of the most important parts. It is a crucial step in the party planning process to never overlook because we should know that our guests expect it; it is a standard.

Your brain is the Mother goose; your fives senses the little geese. In other words, according to Kids Health, none of our senses would be useful without the processing that occurs in the brain. Taste buds can recognize four basic kinds of tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. The salty/sweet taste buds are located near the front of your tongue; the sour taste buds line the sides of your tongue; and the bitter taste buds are found at the very back of your tongue. Taste buds play an important role in helping you enjoy food. When you ENJOY the food or drinks you are digesting this sends a positive message to your brain right?