Toppings Bar from Kelly Ripa/Electrolux Event!

Image above by Dimitrios Kambouris via Us Weekly.

































If you were here Wednesday and Thursday, then you already saw the sneak peeks of the banana split event we worked on with Kelly Ripa and Electrolux for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Above are pictures of the toppings bar we created for the event.

An ice cream/toppings bar is a really fun thing to do for summer entertaining. Since our ice cream story in InStyle, we're seeing this trend everywhere! If you want to surprise your guests during 4th of July entertaining, this will really make a splash! Simply swap out the color palette for red, white and blue.

Here are a few tips for creating a toppings bar...
(1) Include lots of toppings (we included nutella, fluff, fruit, crushed cookies, granola, coconut, and sprinkles for this toppings bar);
(2) Decant your sauces (we used caramel, hot fudge, and butterscotch) into easily pourable vessels. Keep the sauces towards the front of your toppings bar so they don't drip on other goodies on the table;
(3) Include some ice cream-inspired desserts (we used ice cream cupcake cones, ice cream brownies, banana split cookies, and ice cream marshmallows);
(4) Dress up your ice cream cones with decorative cone jackets;
(5) Include lots of napkins on the table!

For more ice cream tips, make sure you see our article in this month's InStyle Magazine.

Just a couple of other notes...
Kelly was so incredibly sweet and cute. She is as bubbly and genuine in person as she is on tv. She totally "got" our work and she insisted that we take a picture to the side of the table because she didn't want to block the table. How sweet is that?

Also, the last picture in the post finishes off the behind-the-scenes for this event. It is a picture of me tweeting and blogging at the same time and Eric captured it right after the event. It is what I usually do after every event so I thought you should see how all of the events end!
Have a wonderful 4th of July!
xoxo-a