END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR PARTY: FINGER FOOD FIESTA

Compensation for this post was provided by Huhtamaki Inc. for the Chinet® brand via AOL Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Huhtamaki Inc. for the Chinet® brand or AOL.

If there is one thing my boys love, it's a party. On any given day they're either dreaming up party ideas, pretending to host a party, or begging me to host a real party. And although I love a good party, as you probably know, I typically don't love parties when kids are involved since things are pretty much guaranteed to get messy and broken.

But since my boys asked so nicely, and I hadn't done any parties involving them for a long time, I gave in and agreed to host an end-of-the-school-year party. We came up with a fun theme -- the Finger Food Fiesta -- and together with Chinet® brand we made a festive and kid friendly party. My boys are happy because they get a party, and I'm happy because no dishes get broken during the party. I really like the Chinet® Classic White™ products because they're sturdy and strong so they can hold a lot of food without collapsing, they don't get soggy, and also they are clean and streamline unlike a lot of paper dishes.

Since we were doing a Fiesta, I wanted to add a fun little element to the Chinet® Classic White™plates, so I used colorful streamers, cut them into thick fringe, and hot glued them to the underside of the plates for a pinata-esque feel. It was such an easy project, but it totally dresses up a simple white plate and makes it super festive.

For the rest of the decor, we hung honeycomb balls in different sizes, I cut out little paper cacti and made a garland, and I bought mini cacti and transferred them to empty tin cans. Such easy and simple decorations, but they packed a big punch!

For food, since it was all about finger food, we made bit size nachos (recipe here), colorful fruit kabobs, and chips and guacamole. I also thought about doing little bite size corn on the cobs, but didn't get to it. Then we did water with limes and colorful straws, and mini churros for dessert. There are lots of other fun Mexican finger foods, so you could do lots more food! And since Chinet® brand makes square plates, I used those for our serving trays which makes cleanup a total breeze.

We had such a blast putting this all together and can't wait for the end of the school year to share it with our friends!

For more entertaining inspiration visit mychinet.com!