Bring Your Own Board - Charcuterie Party

A few months back, my daughter and her friends had a charcuterie party, and they decided to each bring a board to represent a certain color of the rainbow.  They were having a movie night, so all the food was snacks or dessert.  My daughter had so much fun coming up with her red-themed board, that I knew charcuterie boards would become a future monthly dinner theme for me and my girlfriends.  To make it easy on the guests, we didn't do the color idea, but instead guests were able to pick an appetizer, main dish, or dessert.

Invite:  I found some clipart images of charcuterie boards online, and designed the invitation around them.  I kept the colors simple and the fonts easy to read.

Decorations: I did not have a centerpiece because I needed to leave room for all the charcuterie boards, so that made decorating a bit easier.  For the main dining table, I used a brown tablecloth and made a table runner with light brown wrapping paper. 

On top of my white plates, I used Fall themed paper napkins to add some color.  I bought mini charcuterie boards from Amazon, and a friend of mine helped me laser the guest's names along the bottom.  These served as place cards.

The wine labels I designed around the theme as well.  For the red wine, I wrote a funny definition of Charcuterie that I saw online.  I listed it like a dictionary would and added a charcuterie board and wine bottle.  For the white wine, I changed the common phrase, "You better believe this will be good" to be a pun with cheesy words -- "You Cheddar Brie-lieve this wine will be Gouda!"

For wine charms, I printed out common charcuterie board items and attached them to each glass stem.  This included things like a bite of cheese, a cracker, a chocolate covered strawberry, a pretzel, an olive, and more.

Menu:  We had so many tasty goodies at this party!  One of our appetizers was a chip/dip charcuterie board.  Ranch dip, hummus, salsa, guacamole, with pita chips, tortilla chips, and potato chips.  Yum #1.

Another appetizer was a cheese and cracker board. Yum #2.  So many delicious cheeses, crackers, nuts, and grapes.  Must say, my guests and I probably ate too much from these two appetizer platters as they were so tasty!

The board I put together was a taco board.  There were hard and soft shell tortillas, ground beef, seasoned chicken, and all the other fixings for tacos.

Another friend brought a sushi platter. It had a great variety of sushi and sashimi.  Another Yum!

Another guest brought a vegetable platter with hummus and spinach artichoke dip.  I love how she made a serenity path down the middle of the board with a beautiful flower made out of celery in the middle.

One of the side dish platters was tasty sides - onion rings, tater tots, sweet potatoes fries, and crinkle cut fries.

We finished the evening with a delicious dessert charcuterie board.  There were so many tasty goodies on this board.

Favor: I made more of the mini charcuterie boards as party favors.  I used Photoshop to design a cheese-related graphic with fun sayings modeled after some sayings I saw online, and then my friend etched them onto the boards.  I bought cheese knives to attach to each board with ribbon to complete the favor.  Besides these three sayings, I had, "That's what CHEESE said," "Let the GOUDA times roll," "Don't Worry BRIE Happy," and "Hello is it BRIE You're Lookin for."

This party was a lot of fun and it was nice as the hostess to have a little less of the cooking to do.  We were all stuffed after this dinner, but it was delicious and fun.