Home Cafe Prep

A home cafe party/gathering has been very popular for a while now. So I finally mustered up the courage and decided to have a home cafe gathering of my own for the family along with my sister of course. Thought I try it out and hope for the best since we have never hosted or have been baristas of sorts ever. And let's not even begin with coffee making. Lets just say we are always buying or making a simple matcha or coffee at home and have zero experience preparing a variety of drinks. This should be interesting to say the least. It could go really bad real soon or we might actually host a successful gathering while prepping some really good drinks and coming out victorious at the end. I actually told my sister already that if we manage to succeed in this adventure that we should host brunch one day. Not sure what she thought about that but you never know what can happen when you try something new and get out of your comfort zone once in a while.

First thing is first I decided to make an invitation to send to family members. I quickly looked at some invitations for inspo on Etsy and thought I might be able to make my own version on Canva. It is easy to use and they have great art and graphics so adding cute elements is easy. I knew I wanted a bow element so I started with the outer wavy frame with a bow in the middle and my sister agreed that we should use red and pink as the main colors since we were going to host the at home cafe close to Valentine's Day. So the theme became Valentine's Day Cafe. Now I kept it pretty simple with the decor and you will see that shortly but I think it gets the point across. My mom recommended hosting on Super Bowl Sunday since she said there were going to be plenty of snacks to eat since it is the Super Bowl, and we did not have to offer a large variety of items in the cafe. She explained that we could keep it simple and to be honest she is right. So that is what we are doing and it also gives our family members another reason to come over and visit. Lastly I just added cute coffee and matcha graphics to the invitation and that was that. My sister was in charge of sending them to the family.

Second I had to come up with a name for the at home cafe. Honestly I have to admit that I was not creative with this one but I really liked it and settled with this logo above. Thank you to whoever started that whole coffee and gossip trend since that became the name I chose to use. Which I barely found out my sister cringes at the whole name I have chosen. She's like it is trying to be cute but it is just cringe. Next time I might let her choose the name since she is so creative with the whole name situation. So the name is Cafecito and it basically means a small coffee. The bottom part translates to donuts and gossip. And lastly I decided to add an iced cold coffee in the middle since I think an iced coffee is very popular at cafes.

Now that I had a logo I decided to make our uniform for that special day. I made an apron with a free printable pattern I found through this girl on Tik Tok. The free pattern for the apron is from this website called madeeveryday.com and you just type easy apron and you got yourself the best pattern and tutorial you can get online. It is truly very easy to make and I whipped one up and put the logo on using iron on paper for dark clothing. I just printed it from my regular printer on the paper and I had an iron on logo for the apron and a shirt I decided to make as well. Pictures are posted below of the finished product. I am not a professional sewer but I was pretty happy with the final product. My sister decided she would wear the apron and I will wear the shirt.

Third I had to come up with a menu. The hardest part if you ask me. But we settled on 12 different drinks. What we know best coffees and matcha drinks. It might sound like too much but some drinks are the same the only difference is that they come both with ice and hot. I am in charge of the matcha drinks and Frappuccinos while my sister is in charge of iced and hot coffees as well as hot chocolate drinks. Below is a copy of the menu which we decided to make bilingual. FYI some things might not be translated exactly right so just keep in mind that it is ok to make mistakes but if you are a perfectionist please check your menus are well written.

One extra thing and activity that I included for this at home cafe is the coolest loteria for Valentine's Day that I found on Etsy. It is for 20 players and has a deck of 54 Valentine's Day inspired cards. It is very creative and a fresh spin on a very classic game that I grew up playing. It has a card for pretty much anything Valentine's Day related. Like chocolates, handcuffs, flowers and many others. Best thing it was very affordable and it is bilingual. So wether you speak Spanish or not it is easy to play. The game is by TheHeartStringStudio on Etsy. It is a great game and activity for our at home cafe. Below is a picture of the loteria that the Etsy shop owner TheHeartStringStudio took and posted on her Etsy page. I will post my own picture in the following post where I let you guys know how everything turned out.

Along with the game my sister recommended I give out small little gifts for the winners of the loteria. So below are some of the goodie bags personalized with the logo to give to the winners.

I will also post the decor on the next post I write about the at home cafe. For now just remember that if you decide to do your own at home cafe you do not have to include all the things or do everything that I did or that other people that you have seen on social media make. At the end of the day everyones life is different and not everyone has the time to DIY everything for a party. So please do not over stress about planning a gathering. At the end it should be something you enjoy since it is not something that you have to do but that you feel like doing.

Oh one more thing that I forgot to include is that we have been testing out the recipes for the drinks. Some drinks are easier to get right than others but it has been very interesting to say the least. I think I have mastered doing the strawberry matcha and I think I finally got the banana milk matcha right. Maybe practice does not make perfect but it sure helps. Tomorrow I will practice the caramel Frappuccino one last time and I hope I finally get it right. For me this is the hardest part of the whole process since the drinks are the main thing at a cafe and I really want to offer delicious drinks that the family can enjoy and hopefully even ask for seconds. So maybe a little stress is ok.