Soup’s On -Fall Soup Party

Fall is the perfect time to host a soup party -you can do all the prep ahead of time, it’s warm and hearty, and it can feed a crowd.  On the weekend, we had about 25 friends from church over for a simple lunch of soup and bread.

On Saturday afternoon, my husband and I made four different homemade soups.  First we made Cream of Mushroom –see our recipe here.  This was my favourite. Make it veggie, if you need to by replacing the chicken stock with veggie stock.  Next we made a Tangy Roasted Garlic and Potato Soup, it gets its tang from the buttermilk, can also easily be made veggie –see our recipe here.  Next, I made a classic chicken noodle, always a hit with the kids.  Lastly I tried Italian Sausage and Tortellini, it was the first time I’ve made it and it was probably the most popular soup.

We set everything up in the backyard, starting with the soup table.  Love these chalkboard buntings, they’re so handy since they can be changed for any party.  I also used one on the drink stand.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’d know that I”ve been looking for one of these little carts for a while and I finally found this one on kijiji.  Here it is dressed up for the party, with the drinks banner, a bucket of ice water, and another of drinking boxes for the kids.  Up on top, a simple fall punch of peach juice, white cranberry, and ginger ale.

I love these sweet fall leaf paper straws.  Love is in the details.

Most of us sat under the pergola, I added an easy centrepiece of garden orbs.

I dressed them up for fall by adding a few fall ribbons.  I love how simple and pretty it turned out.

I also added some more of my pine cone garland on the pergola, just like I did up on the deck earlier.

See more details of how I decorated the deck for fall here.

The deck stairs certainly make great extra seating for a party.

After church, we stopped at the bakery and picked up lots of fresh bread, then came home to re-heat the soup before our guests arrived.

I used little chalkboards to label all the soups.

We had so much soup, we needed a separate table for all the bread!  It worked out well this way for traffic flow too.

This menu worked out really well too, lots of people tried a bit of everything, and everyone could help themselves to as much as they wanted.  I was able to freeze the left overs too. I was tempted to add a veggie tray and salad and cheese and crackers, but really there were lots of veggies in the soup, and everyone loved that they were all homemade, so I’m glad we spent our energy on them, and store-bought fresh bread was the perfect, easy accompaniment.

For dessert, my husband made two big pans of apple crisp, and we served it with vanilla ice cream. Yum!  Perfect way to finish a fall meal.

It was a great menu for a get-together of this size, since it could all be made ahead of time, and was easy to have guests help themselves too.  One little tip -make sure you have enough ladles for the soup.  With a fun fall soup get-together like this, life really is a party!

This post is linked up at Motivational Mondays, and Between Naps on the Porch.