DIY Garden Party: Frozen Floral Ice Bucket

Last Updated February 24th, 2018 at 05:30 pm by Lisa

A Garden Party Frozen Floral Ice Bucket is perfect for Spring and Summer entertaining!  A stylish and pretty way to serve icy cold bottles of sparkling water, wine, or champagne outdoors.

These ice buckets are so much fun to have at a backyard party or celebration. We just put one out for a family birthday party, and it lasted about 3 hours.

Place it somewhere where the melting ice water can neatly drip into your backyard or garden. Have fun and get creative using flowers, fruit, greenery, or decorations that fit your theme or event.

How to Make a Garden Party: Frozen Floral Ice Bucket:

Materials you need:

• 2-gallon plastic pail (hardware store paint section)
• 2 1/2 quart plastic pail (hardware store paint section)
• silver platter or large plate
• 2-gallon bottles of  distilled or boiled water (freezes clear)
• flowers, greenery, sliced fruit, or decorations
• tape
• frozen ice-pack or weight

I used flowers left over from making my Garden Crostini recipe and flowers from my garden!

Okay, let’s do this!

Step 1: 

• Clear out a shelf in your freezer so the bucket fits.                                                                                     (not easy for me as my freezer is always stuffed) ; D

• Next, pour 3-4 inches of distilled water into the bottom of the bucket and place a layer of flowers or fruit in the bottom. This is the base of your ice bucket, pop into the freezer. Freeze until solid about 4 hours. Tip: Distilled and boiled tap water freeze clearer than plain tap water.

Step 2: 

Place the smaller container inside a larger container, rest on ice base and tape small bucket inside large bucket to hold in place.

Weigh down smaller container with a small ice pack or a weight.

Step 3:

Fill with another 3 or 4 inches of water and place flowers down into water.

Sometimes the flowers float up, use a chopstick to push down into the water.

Step 4: 

Repeat and freeze in 3-4 layers depending on bucket size. Freezing in layers allows flowers to be all the way through the bucket. Otherwise, they float to the top.

Freeze overnight before taking out of plastic bucket.

Step 5: 

When you are ready to unmold your Garden Party: Frozen Floral Ice Bucket…

Pour warm water into the center small bucket which will release the small pail from center.

Run the large bucket under warm water until the bucket releases.

Once your ice bucket is out of the mold, return it to the freezer until your party begins, place out after guests arrive with a bottle of  sparkling water, wine, or champagne. I pre-chilled the wine bottle seen here so it was nice and icy cold.

So pretty…and by the way, I kept this in my freezer for a couple weeks before using, so this project can be done in advance of your party.

Garden Party: Frozen Floral Ice Bucket Ideas and Tips

Ideas:

Place your ice bucket on a beautiful silver tray on top of a napkin, this helps it not slide.

You can use the same technique freezing techniques to make small bowls to serve shrimp cocktail and sauce,  wouldn’t lemon slices be gorgeous frozen in ice bowl? Just use two different size bowls as your mold and the same instructions in this post. You could make one for shrimp, and one for the sauce.

Things to freeze: Try lemon, lime, or orange slices, fruit like strawberries or blueberries, use flowers and greenery from your own garden. For Winter or Fall, try leaves, cranberries, greenery, pine cones, or cinnamon sticks!

Or serve a cold dip in an ice bowl with cut veggies chilled.

Or serve pretty ice cubes for drinks using edible flowers, fruit, or herbs using an ice-cube tray.

TIPs:

 –The ice bucket will begin to melt very fast so place it out at your party just after guests have arrived.

–  Before your party, remove the  frozen floral ice bucket from the plastic pail, and keep in the freezer.

Have fun, create and share something you put your heart into with your guests. Now that is true entertaining style and your guests will love it!

All the Best,

Lisa

XO

Here is an appetizer that would go perfectly with a chilled glass of wine or champagne.

Serve Garden Crostini at your next backyard garden party. I used extra flowers from this recipe to make the Frozen Floral Ice Bucket and added a few more from our garden.

Make Garden Crudites with Light Green Goddess Dip, how cute is the dip in a purple cabbage?