My Parties: How to Style a Back to School Dessert Table

Each year, on the first day of school, I style a little back to school dessert table to welcome the girls home. I make this as easy as possible, because I’m throwing it together in the middle of the day. (It helps to work from home!)

The backdrop is a reproduction ABCs poster that I bought in a local antique mall, but you can find the same poster on Amazon. I know the poster is elementary school style, and my girls are going into 8th grade, but I’m in “turn back time” mode. They are still sweet, and they still like me, but I want them to be little again.

So, I just embraced a retro school house look. I hung the poster from a white framed bulletin board and draped that in paper chains. The girls and one of their friends made the paper chains for me. I hung another paper chain from the front of our sideboard.

Dessert Table Decor

On the dessert table, I added:

• Red framed chalkboard from the Target dollar aisle.
• Mini letter board from Elemotto on Etsy. (The girls are now fighting over who gets to keep this.)
• Two composition notebooks, used as serving trays.

Party Colors

I keep the colors simple, sticking with red, white and black.

• The china is my Johnson Brothers ironstone that I use for so many parties.
• The red forks are from WalMart.
• I choose black cocktail napkins for the contrast.
• The red dishes are from Dollar Tree.
• The red cake stand is from Delightfully Lovely on Etsy, but I think the shop is closed.
• The red straws are from my Etsy shop.

No-Bake Desserts

The girls picked out the desserts at Target. I was coming off a week of being sick, so making something cute and school-inspired was not in the cards! They chose chocolate and red velvet cupcakes, strawberry and cookies & cream cake-on-a-stick, and Jones soda. All I did was use cursive and ruler-themed masking tape to decorate the cupcake toppers and attached straws to the soda bottles.

The whole party took about an hour to set up and cost about $45 in food, the poster, and bulletin board. Everything else I had on hand. Happy back to school for you and your kids!! How do you celebrate?