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Create a DIY cocktail station to make hosting your friends and family a breeze! If you’ve hosted before, you know that there are so many moving pieces to manage when entertaining guests in your home. The hours leading up to dinner can be stressful – guests are arriving sporadically, you’re finishing up dinner, assembling the cheese board, answering the door, and handing out drinks. However, you can cut down on the chaos with a DIY cocktail (and mocktail) station! This eliminates the need for you to worry about one more thing while prepping dinner, and everyone can have fun creating their drink of choice (the kids too).
Also, you can tailor your DIY cocktail station theme to any holiday – Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years Eve, the list goes on. Overall, these mixers, spirits, and garnishes should be available at your local grocery store (highly recommend Trader Joe’s). Lastly, the drink supplies may already be in your kitchen, or you can shop everything on LTK and in our supplies list below!
Setup Tips for your DIY cocktail station:
- First, in order from left to right, set up the supplies, mixers, spirits, then garnishes on your counter or table in those categories.
- Mixers can be left in their original bottles, or you can pour them into labeled carafes or pitchers for a more unified look.
- Then, assemble the garnishes on a platter or in individual dishes.
- Lastly, print recipe cards for suggested drink combos. Use the Avery postcard templates on their website for easing printing!
- If you’re having a large party, keep backstock of your ingredients in the fridge until they’re ready to be replenished.
- The GE Nugget Ice maker shines for uses like this! (Here’s a more budget friendly nugget ice maker with great reviews, too.) Perfect nugget ice will stay solid all night for your guests to scoop at any time.
Supplies:
- Tray or Bar cart
- Vintage glasses or Plastic cocktail glasses
- Disposable mixers
- Cocktail napkins
- Ice bucket
- Glass carafes
- Gold stirring spoons
- Gold jigger (not to be confused with gold digger :))
- Serving platter for garnishes
- Cocktail recipe cards for suggested mixes
Mixers:
- Cranberry juice
- Apple cider
- Soda water
- Ginger beer
Spirits (optional):
- Champagne
- Whiskey
- Vodka
Garnishes:
- Mint
- Orange slices
- Cinnamon sticks
- Cranberries
- Rosemary
3 Easy Recipe Card Ideas:
- Spiked Apple Cider (3 oz apple juice, 1 oz whiskey, orange slice, cinnamon stick)
- Spiced Cranberry Spritz (2 oz cranberry juice, 2 oz champagne, mint, orange)
- Holiday Mule (3 oz ginger ale, 1 oz vodka, mint, cranberries)
