Let Me Take You to a Rio Party!

This past week­end, we cel­e­brat­ed my moth­er’s birth­day with a Rio par­ty! A cou­ple of years ago, we com­mem­o­rat­ed my mom’s big day with a Pan Am par­ty, hark­ing back to her days work­ing at the air­line. Though last year’s vibe of her Namaste Spa was serene and tran­quil, we decid­ed to spice it up a bit this year!

As you may or may not know, I was born in Brazil and lived there until I was almost 12. Though I’m from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro is such an icon­ic city (the sec­ond largest in the coun­try) and rep­re­sents the quin­tes­sen­tial Brazil­ian spir­it! We trav­eled there often to vis­it our fam­i­ly mem­bers grow­ing up and I was excit­ed to intro­duce my hus­band on his first trip to Brazil when we grad­u­at­ed col­lege. And coin­ci­den­tal­ly, my par­ents met for the very first time in Rio!

Our fam­i­ly also fell in love with the 2011 ani­mat­ed movie “Rio” like so many oth­ers, intro­duc­ing the incred­i­bly friend­ly and fun Brazil­ian enthu­si­asm to audi­ences of all ages. My daugh­ter was the blue macaw char­ac­ter, Jew­el, for Hal­loween that same year and we are all look­ing for­ward to the sequel, “Rio 2”, sched­uled to be released in the Spring of 2014! Plus, the spot­light will con­tin­ue to shine on Rio and Brazil, as the next Fifa World Cup will be tak­ing place there next year {you have to know that soccer/futebol is HUUUUUGE there!}, along with the 2016 Olympic Games!

Here are the details of the col­or­ful trop­i­cal par­ty that will make you want to hop on the plane, put on your Car­naval mask and dance the sam­ba on the beach­es of Rio!

For the buf­fet set-up, I decid­ed to com­bine both the food and dessert options on one table. I knew I want­ed the icon­ic and rec­og­niz­able side­walk pat­tern from Copaca­bana beach as a back­drop, which was achieved with a print­ed show­er cur­tain! Since the Brazil­ian flag is pri­mar­i­ly green and yel­low, I focused on these hues, but also want­ed to infuse addi­tion­al bright col­ors espe­cial­ly found in the coun­try’s gor­geous native birds. The first two let­ters of the hang­ing “RIO” are wood cov­ered feath­ers, while the “O” is a ring car­ry­ing a mul­ti-col­ored tou­can I found at a local swap meet. I designed the buf­fet labels and signs with clip art from Foto In Sce­na and Klouise Digi Art.

The food con­sist­ed of authen­tic Brazil­ian items, includ­ing a steak and lin­guiça bar­be­cue, fei­joa­da {a stew of beans, beef and pork}, rice, pão de quei­jo {cheese bread~my absolute favorite!} and cox­in­ha {fried chick­en croquettes}.

The cup­cakes anchored the table, resem­bling the Rio beach­es with the sandy {crushed gra­ham crack­er} tops and col­or­ful sea of umbrel­las. I dec­o­rat­ed a cou­ple of the cup­cakes with fon­dant top­pers inspired by a sou­venir mag­net I had pur­chased on a trip to Brazil, with green and yel­low striped tow­els. One includ­ed a pair of the super pop­u­lar Brazil­ian flip flops, Hava­ianas, while the oth­er depict­ed a sun­bathing beau­ty with a flag beach hat! And I could­n’t for­get the nation’s #1 sport: fute­bol! The soc­cer ball was cre­at­ed from fon­dant and rest­ed in the beachy sand, while the land­mark stat­ue of “Cristo Reden­tor” {Christ the Redeemer} looks over as it does in real­i­ty atop Cor­co­v­a­do mountain.

The remain­der of the desserts offered includ­ed tra­di­tion­al Brazil­ian good­ies, such as brigadeiro {gooey, choco­latey bon bon good­ness!} and pudim {flan}, as well as a vari­ety of refresh­ing fruit!

I re-used the lemon­ade stand, which orig­i­nal­ly made an appear­ance at my daugh­ter’s Vin­tage Luau ear­li­er this year to dis­play sev­er­al trop­i­cal juices and the Brazil­ian soft drink, Guaraná. I orig­i­nal­ly planned on mak­ing some car­naval masks for the cel­e­bra­tion, but found some fan­cy and col­or­ful ones adorned with stones and feath­ers at our local swap meet that were just per­fect for the occa­sion! I found some play­ing cards from Michaels for less than $1 that I decid­ed to use as coast­ers. For some par­ty activ­i­ties, beach pad­dle balls were offered, along with some mini soc­cer balls!

For the adults, I set up a Caipir­in­ha bar to make Brazil’s nation­al cock­tail, con­sist­ing of cachaça {a sug­ar­cane alco­hol}, limes and sug­ar. Instead of a reg­u­lar glass, I thought it would be fun to serve them in coconut cups with striped paper straws left over from the luau as well!

Once we were all ready to eat, we moved some of the food to a table that was set with burlap table cov­er­ing and set with col­or­ful plates and wood­en uten­sils. Again the uten­sils were orig­i­nal­ly pur­chased for my daugh­ter’s luau and were stamped with “ALOHA” on the han­dles, so I re-pur­posed them by cov­er­ing them with yel­low yarn, which added more col­or and inter­est to the table set­ting! As you can see, there were many ele­ments that I re-used from the Hawai­ian par­ty, but by chang­ing details and col­ors, it was extreme­ly help­ful in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the two cel­e­bra­tions, while being cost-effec­tive at the same time!

With sam­ba play­ing in the back­ground, we had a fab­u­lous time cel­e­brat­ing my mom, Brazil­ian style! And with all the upcom­ing events occur­ring in my native coun­try in the next few years, it looks like the par­ty won’t stop! It is Brazil, after all! Obaaaaaaa!!! ♥

 

Merci Beaucoup!

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