French Inspired Picnic - Life is a Party

French Inspired Picnic: a free printable French Picnic Menu, food and decor inspiration, perfect for entertaining or Bastille Day celebrations.

This French inspired picnic is everything that picnics should be -beautiful, relaxing, and delicious. I was inspired by these amazing handmade pottery plates from France.

The Plates

I partnered with Séverine, who has an etsy shop called “Argile” which means “clay” in English. All her work is amazing. I was drawn first to the beautiful shape of these plates -26 cm, in white. They feel amazing too, and the colour is beautiful. I love their size as well.

They are so beautiful that each one feels like a gorgeous art piece. They came all the way from France and arrived in perfect condition, expertly packaged.

The Picnic

For the picnic we headed to the beach. It was the perfect location for a beautiful picnic. While I set every thing up, everyone had a swim, and then we nibbled and swam, and walked on the beach afterward. It was the loveliest afternoon.

We used an old palette for our “picnic table”. I love its rustic look, and was the perfect spot to keep sand out of our feast.

Some rustic vintage silverware was perfect for our French inspired vibe. These are some mismatched old pieces picked up at an antique fair.

I created a runner out of old French book pages that I ran down the centre of the table. It doesn’t show up too much here, but it was a nice detail that added lots of texture, and interest. I put some parchment paper on top of that to layer the beautiful food on, but we’ll get to the food in a minute.

For flowers for this table, since the real centre piece was the amazing food, I just tucked in some ferns and white flowers here and there. Again, it just helps to create the beautiful rich layered effect.

Around the picnic table I added some blankets and lots of pillows. It was so comfy and luxurious feeling, and definitely made everyone want to linger at the table.

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The Food

The star attraction here has to be the food.

I decided that since our “table” was quite small that running the food down the centre and making it truly our centrepiece would be perfect.

I also love how accessible it is to guests around the table, and how perfectly French it seems to linger at a picnic all afternoon enjoying the great atmosphere and food.

Savoury

When you think of France you think wine and cheese, so that was the starting place for this menu. I set up the food all along the table and moved from beautiful fresh baquettes , into cured meats for a charcuterie board, and some French pate.

From there we added some delicious cheeses to finish the savoury items. Around these items that took centre stage I mixed in a few fun accompmients like tomatoes, cucumbers, cornichans, dijon mustard, red pepper jelly, olives, and pickled onions. The savoury transitioned perfectly into a fruit section.

Sweet

I used grapes, cherries, strawberries and blueberries. And from the fruit, I added in some amazing French sweets -perhaps everyones favourite part of the picnic!

My local grocery store always has madelines and I love them. They’re the perfect not too sweet little mini vanilla cake with a touch of lemon.

At my favourite bakery I picked up some pastries -a few different kinds of eclairs, and a lobster tail pastry. And of course I couldn’t resist some macaroons.

These were the perfect sweet ending to our picnic and we all shared them and tried a few different kinds, and tried to name our favourites.

It really was the most perfect afternoon that flowed into evening. We enjoyed a long walk on the beach to finish it off.

Over the last few summers I’ve had a lot of fun creating lots of different picnics, but this was truly one of my very favourites -so far. 😉 I joked with my friends who helped me set up that I pay for their services in cheese, and we all agreed it was a beautiful arrangement. This picnic was more elaborate than most, but I hope it inspires you, if even on a smaller scale. And if it seems too much to carry, just offer to pay your friends in cheese for their help too.