Unbelievable summer party ideas

If you don’t know what to do during hot summer weekends, these summer party ideas are just for you. A bit of fantasy, desire to enjoy yourself and do something pleasant for your family will make even the most unbelievable ideas possible.

For an outside party in high summer give preference to Provencal style. Try to find or hire in rustic furniture, cover your tables with Provencal fabric, hang bunches of lavender tied with lavender raffia to the back of the chairs and use great bowls of lemons or cherries as table centers. Serve sticks of French bread, smelly cheeses, olives, huge bowls of tossed salad, gallons of red wine and lashings of strawberries and cream!

Light the walkway to your venue with a series of flaming Olympic torches - these are not genuine flames but very realistic simulated fabric flames powered by electric fans.

For adding personal touch to your party and in order to avoid routine, have a Hawaiian style barbecue with barbecued seafood, which can include crab and lobster and small roasted exotic vegetables, followed by tropical fruit and ice-cream. Give all your guests grass skirts and tropical flower leys. Cooking outside on a barbecue should be well away from where guests can inhale smoke and fumes. Try to make the food adventurous with lots of exotic salads and side dishes to complement the meat.

Hire an ice bar to stand near the dance floor. This is a really great gimmick to cool down vigorous dancers. Both the bar and glasses are made of solid ice and if lit from behind with coloured lights the effect is absolutely stunning.

Place tall glass vases around the room filled with submerged seashells and orchids, which can be held, as if suspended under water, by the employment of thick clear but invisible cellophane.

If you are anticipating a hot weather, place a small decorative fan at each table setting.

Instead of the normal champagne reception, employ a talented barman or two to run a Caribbean-style cocktail bar. Be inventive, as well as exotic cocktails use lots of different flavoured ice cubes and fresh fruit in beautifully decorated bowls with non-alcoholic punch for children and elderly relatives.

For midsummer parties in a marquee, where it can get horribly stuffy, strategically place great bowls of coloured ice-cubes around the perimeter of the marquee. Make sure you use food colorings in case people are so hot they decide to suck the ice cubes. The cubes can be coloured to complement your flowers etc. An alternative idea to coloring is to freeze a small rose-head in each cube.

If you are serving a fruit punch adorn it with slices of strawberry and ice cubes with a rose petal frozen into the centre of each one.

To keep your guests extra cool purchase tiny lemon-coloured flannels, soak these in water with a few drops of lemon oil added, then offer these refreshing aids to guests, hot and bothered from high activity on the dance floor. The trick here is not to offer these refresher pads from an ordinary bowl but from an ice bowl made with pieces of lemon frozen into the sides.

Freeze small fruits, like grapes and strawberries, for a quick refresher.

Hire a bubble machine to add froth and fun on the dance floor.

A really cool effect can be achieved by hiring dramatic water effects from lavish fountains to waterfalls.

Finally why not hold a beach themed party, either inside or in your backyard. You can replace chairs with sand and beach mats or a few park benches and have some polystyrene boulders, large seashells and beach pebbles lying around. Put up a few beach umbrellas and use seaside posters on prominent walls. Add a surf board to the décor and have sea sounds CDs playing. Keep the party dress code for the beach and serve a selection of seafood and lots of cool fruity drinks. A good touch would be to hire a real ice cream stall for guests to have a seaside cornet when they wanted.