A Midsummer Night's Dream Picnic

Midsummer Night’s Dream Party: An individual boxed picnic to enjoy Shakespeare in the park, whimsical flower masks, and perfect boho picnic decor.

Shakespeare in the park, and a beautiful picnic to enjoy with it makes for the perfect Midsummer Night’s Dream Party! We ventured downtown to the Toronto’s High Park this summer to see Shakespeare in the park. It was our girls first experience with Shakespeare and we had such a wonderful time with our Midsummer Nights Dream themed party. We loved having a picnic together with themed entertainment. Our city has plays all summer season in the park, and it was such a fun experience, and magical atmosphere for our themed event.

We boxed up our picnic early and left it in a cooler in the car while we enjoyed the park’s playground, labyrinth, and free zoo. Then just around dinner time we headed over to the outdoor theatre to enjoy our picnic before the play started. There were lots of other picnics happening too, as they encourage play goers to bring their own picnic to enjoy before the play begins, and create their own magical midsummer’s eve.

The whole idea for the day actually came from my girls, and Maddie was all about putting together the perfect picnic for the ultimate midsummer night’s dream party. We went with our friends and truly had the perfect time together. Today I’m so excited to share with you the next picnic in our summer picnic series -this one just might be the most beautiful so far. 😉

The Picnic Boxes

For the picnic we put together the yummiest individual boxes. We packed up some salad, bread, a little onion and goat’s cheese tart-get the recipe here, and some rotisserie chicken for everyone.

The little salad was a made with tomatoes from our garden and bocconcini. In the bottom of a little mason jar I added a splash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and about a 1/4 tsp of homemade pesto. The on top of it I added some cherry tomatoes and mini bocconcini and finished it of with some salt and pepper. Just before opening everyone gave their’s a shake and they were perfect.

The chicken was the perfect easy addition for a picnic. I picked it up at the grocery store, cut it up, and wrapped everyone’s pieces in a little parchment paper.

The tarts were made by Maddie the day before -she’s so good at pastry! If you didn’t want to make your own pastry though, store bought frozen would be fine. Cook your tart shells and then set aside. Make caramelized onions on your stove top, and then before serving add to the baked tart shells, and tops with some goat’s cheese. These little tarts are so easy, and so delicious. Find our recipe for the goat’s cheese and caramelized onion tarts here -we just swapped out the puff pastry for pie pastry for our picnic.

I added a fresh buttered bun from the bakery too.

Everything got packaged up in these perfect little paper boxes, lined with some parchment paper.

We tied ours with twine and tucked in a little menu that Maddie made for the occasion.

We tucked our cutlery, napkins, and menu into some tiny little paper bags and tied them to the top. It was perfectly portable, and so, so cute, and meant that we didn’t need to place settings or plates at our garden party picnic.

Pansy Juice

In the Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night Dream play, the love potion is pansy juice so we thought it would be fun to make some simple labels for our pink lemonade. Since Shakespeare makes us think of books, we used book pages for the labels and it was the perfect addition.

Floral Masks

My girls also made a mask for all the girls to wear. In keeping with the play, they made them out of pretty flower petals rose petals, and leaves for an enchanted forest feel. These were so sweet, along with some floral crowns. Our flower crowns weren’t made from real flowers but they were still a fun way to celebrate the beauty of nature. Fairy wings would have been a sweet addition too, for the complete theme experience.

For the floral masks, they found a template on-line and printed it on card stock to use as the base, and then added all the pretty fresh leaves and flower petals from our garden, and just hot glued them on. the perfect finishing touch was a twig handle. They turned out so pretty and whimsical and perfect for the evenings midsummer celebrations.

Dessert

Dessert Menu

chocolate mousse
fresh fruit
cookies

For dessert we had some sweet delights. I set up our desserts on top of one of the picnic baskets with some fairy lights, and some pretty flowers. It was so pretty. Maddie made some homemade chocolate mousse.

We served them in small mason jars, which made them perfectly portable. And along with our mousse our friends picked up some delicious cookies at the bakery on the way for some more sweet things.

We also brought along some fresh blueberries.

I tried to keep the menu manageable, so we didn’t need to cook all day before. There were a few good short cuts with the rotisserie chicken and the bakery cookies, and we made just the goat’s cheese and caramelized onion tarts and the chocolate mousse from scratch.

Setting Up The Picnic

We brought some beautiful blankets to make it cozy and everyone got a pillow which certainly helped to keep us comfortable after sitting there many hours enjoying the food and then the play. We used a wagon to bring our stuff to the picnic, which worked out great. Things like a little vase of flowers and twinkle lights helped add a little magic and fairy dust to our picnic.

The course of true love never did run smoothly, as exhibited in the play, but the evening sure did! The girls all managed to stay awake and follow the plot of their first Shakespeare play. We thought starting out with one that included fairies, like fairy king Oberon, and a magical theme and was a good plan. 😉 The day was a raging success, and I think it just might need to become a tradition that we do again next year.