Anabelle’s Apple Cider and Bake Sale Stand!

This post is spon­sored by KitchenAid, but as always, all ideas and opin­ions are my own!

Though lemon­ade stands are the clas­sic Sum­mer­time expe­ri­ence for chil­dren of all ages, it seems that the entire motif just explod­ed in the par­ty scene recent­ly. From actu­al stands to fundrais­ing events and even birth­day par­ty themes, it seems that life has been hand­ing out a pletho­ra of lemons late­ly since every­one is mak­ing lemonade!

The only prob­lem is here in Vegas, the Sum­mer tem­per­a­tures can reach up to 115º+, so while a cup of ice cold lemon­ade sounds divine and thirst-quench­ing, actu­al­ly sell­ing it in the immense heat can be quite tor­tur­ous! Our solu­tion? Now that Autumn has arrived and thus bring­ing with it cool­er weath­er, my daugh­ter, Anabelle and I decid­ed to put togeth­er a stand per­fect for Fall. Though many inevitably relate this sea­son with pump­kins {who would­n’t since every­thing seems to auto­mat­i­cal­ly turn into pump­kin spice as soon as Octo­ber rolls around!}, we decid­ed to focus on anoth­er Fall fruit we thought deserved some love: APPLES! So, with the help of var­i­ous KitchenAid prod­ucts, we put togeth­er an adorable apple cider and bake sale stand, per­fect for sea­son­al events and celebrations!

Start­ing off with the over­all col­ors, the use of red was a giv­en due to the nat­ur­al apple hues, but I want­ed to incor­po­rate brighter tones to pop it, so I com­bined hot pink and orange in the mix. Now, I think we’ve all seen the fab­u­lous col­ors KitchenAid intro­duced in their stand mix­ers, so when it came time to choose which one I want­ed, it was a no brain­er: Rasp­ber­ry Ice! Not only would it be ide­al with this project, but is per­fect for my brand! As soon as I opened the box, I fell instant­ly in love with it and, frankly, I think the feel­ing was mutu­al. We’re going to have a long future togeth­er, my beau­ti­ful hot pink mixer! 😉

Back to the decor, I want­ed to blend nat­ur­al ele­ments to the vibrant col­ors, includ­ing wood {i.e. bushel bas­kets and crates}, along with burlap and hay to give it a Fall feel. Along with our trusty lit­tle stand I’ve used in var­i­ous pre­vi­ous events {Vin­tage Hawai­ian Luau, Let Me Take You to Rio, End­less Sum­mer, Sweet Lalaloop­sy}, we need­ed a big­ger table or plat­form to serve the remain­der of the good­ies. To give it a rus­tic feel, I envi­sioned an old wood lad­der and was able to find one on Craigslist for $20! With the addi­tion of a cou­ple of wood­en slats for shelves and a coat of stain, it turned out to be the per­fect display.

And final­ly, all the food and drink signs were cre­at­ed with wood apple cut-outs, paint­ed with black chalk­board paint and writ­ten on with chalk pens. Some of the small apples were attached to sticks, while the oth­ers were glued to col­ored scrap­book paper, then burlap-cov­ered embroi­dery hoops. The charm­ing SWEET  sign was from Ten23Designs, cre­at­ed orig­i­nal­ly for my book release party!

Now to all the good­ies! I think a vital part of run­ning an apple cider stand is, well, offer­ing apple cider! I’ve nev­er made home­made apple cider, so I thought this would be a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to try with my KitchenAid Dia­mond blender. I basi­cal­ly cored and sliced approx­i­mate­ly two dozen apples {red deli­cious for sweet­ness!}, pureed them in the blender until they were fine­ly ground, then strained all the juice through a cheese­cloth. You can eas­i­ly add addi­tion­al fla­vors with ingre­di­ents, such as cin­na­mon, all spice, cloves and nut­meg. We served it direct­ly in the blender jar, pour­ing them into mason jars with han­dles and adding sliced apples for added embellishment.

For the bake sale treats, we made caramel apple cup­cakes {we tried this deli­cious recipe from the Food Net­work or check out some sea­son­al box mix­es avail­able} with cute fon­dant top­pers, apple pie pops {sim­i­lar to the ones we made for the Moth­ern Hen Brunch, but with an apple fill­ing}, indi­vid­ual apple pie jars, can­dy and caramel apples and the one option that com­ple­ment­ed each of the items per­fect­ly: home­made vanil­la ice cream {recipe at the bot­tom of the post}, which we made in the KitchenAid ice cream mak­er that attached direct­ly to the stand mix­er! We also had plen­ty of apples for sale, along with lit­tle jars of caramel for dip­ping and fol­low­ing the sim­plest instruc­tions from One Good Thing by Jillee to make sparkling apple juice.

Our apple cider and bake sale stand was a com­plete suc­cess and the per­fect way to kick off the Fall sea­son! I loved not only uti­liz­ing the amaz­ing KitchenAid prod­ucts to make so many of the good­ies we offered, but also incor­po­rat­ing them into the over­all design, which helped to give it home­made feel. It also does­n’t hurt to have a cute sales­per­son who is, after all, the apple of my eye! ♥