INSPIRATION FRIDAY: Dia de los Muertos Fiesta

Guest post by Deanna from Mirabelle Creations
Special for CraftyChica.com

Hi everyone! I am Deanna and I blog about party planning and entertaining over at Mirabelle Creations (http://www.mirabellecreations.blogspot.com/). I recently planned a Dia de los Muertos party, that Kathy has so graciously asked me to share with you.

 Truthfully, I live in Kentucky and had never heard of Dia de los Muertos, until two years ago. In 2009, my daughter performed in a beautiful, educational ballet about Dia de los Muertos. While performing in the ballet, my daughter and I learned so much about the holiday and absolutely fell in love with it.

When it came time for me to design a Halloween party printable collection for my Etsy store (www.etsy.com/shop/dtalwalkar ) this year, I wanted to use something a little different than the traditional Halloween images. After falling in love with Dia de los Muertos, I knew that I wanted to design party printables based on brightly colored calaveras, which are so closely associated with Dia de los Muertos. Once the party printables were created, we were ready to start on the rest of the party.

The party food and decorations were fairly simple, but tried to incorporate many Dia de los Muertos traditions. First, we made pan de muertos. We also made sugar skulls. I didn’t have a sugar skull mold, so I improvised and used skull ice-cube molds that we purchased locally. Calaveras sugar cookies were made using fondant toppers. Lastly, we made calacas cupcakes. Cantaloupe agua fresca was served for a refreshing beverage. Decorations included a paper banner and paper flowers, inspired by traditional Dia de los Muertos elements.

If you are interested in hosting your first Dia de los Muertos party this year, don’t be intimidated! My eight year old daughter and I created all of the details of this party fairly easily. In fact, she did most of the decorating of the sugar skulls and sugar cookies. Before starting, I was a little nervous about baking so many new treats, but they were all pretty simple and fun. Give it a try and you’ll fall in love with Dia de los Muertos, too!

Felicidades,
Kathy :-)
Check out my new novel! MISS SCARLET'S SCHOOL OF PATTERNLESS SEWING