Merry & Bright Hot Cocoa Bar

Last year myself and some of my sweet blogging friends hosted a holiday party, the theme was Merry & Bright. I shared a little bit of it last year, and a few of the tutorials for decor…but I realized that I never actually shared the entire cocoa bar. Today I am sharing all the details of how I decorated this gorgeous Merry & Bright Hot Cocoa Bar and how you can easily recreate this look at your next holiday gathering.

We decided the theme needed to keep with traditional colors, pops of metallic gold, and a tiny bit of modern thrown in the mix. My main inspiration was the awesome vintage inspired plaid fabric seen in the photo below. We found it at Walmart for $5 / yard. The colors were spot on and the plaid was perfection. I ended up using it to cover a long wooden box to create height for our vintage cocoa dispenser.

I wanted to be sure the cocoa bar had plenty of sweet treats that would make for a perfect cup of cocoa. How cute are the white and milk chocolate squares with stamped holiday themed sticks? They are perfect stirred into your cocoa, adding some extra chocolatey goodness.

To make the stamped sticks just grab some popsicle sticks and a set of small alphabet stamps. Stamp any holiday saying you want and let dry. Then using a square mold poor melted white and milk chocolate into the mold. Just before they are completely set in the mold add your popsicle sticks. Let them harden completely.

Transform ordinary syrup bottles like Vanilla, Hazelnut, or S’mores with glittered cardstock wrapped around each bottle. You can hang small tags or labels from the bottles to let guests know the flavor choices.

Chocolate dipped pretzel rods are a great salty and sweet treat, and they are super easy to make.

I found these cute glass mason jar mugs at our local dollar store. You can find similar mugs HERE. I wanted to add something special to the mugs so I created these fun white leather tassels and wrapped them around each mug.

The drink stirrers are so easy to make, aren’t they so fun?! They almost have a vintage vibe to them. Using just small wooden skewers, I added metallic red pom-poms to the top of each skewer with a dab of hot glue.

I wanted to add a touch of modern and these amazing Himmeli Ornaments were the perfect DIY, you can find the tutorial to make them HERE. They are super easy to make and made a huge impact. I hung them from the ceiling with clear fishing line, they looked like they were floating above the cocoa bar.

The gorgeous wood cocoa bar sign was made by our friend Sunny. She made several amazing signs for the party, all perfection.

The fun DIY Cocoa Bar Marquee Sign was a fun way to let guests know where they could warm up on a cool night outdoors during the party, find the tutorial HERE.

Overall this Hot Cocoa Bar couldn’t have turned out any better. Between the barn wood backdrop, vintage meets modern feel, and cozy colors it was just so pretty.