We had so much fun creating party platters to get a celebration in my property. We received numerous compliments about the beauty of the platters and they were really quite simple to make and fairly inexpensive.

Shade is actually important in creating platters. Frequently we use lettuce as a base and then set the food on top of the lettuce. We bought a huge bunch of romaine leaves in Costco and used those as a foundation on the platters. We place the sandwiches on top of the lettuce and we put the deviled eggs on top of lettuce. The green lettuce helps balance the colour on any food platter.

If you are making sandwiches, look at putting an olive (either green or black) on a coloured toothpick and sticking the toothpick to the sandwich half. Not only will you finally have the green or black colour from the olives, but you will also have yellow, green, red or blue from the toothpick.

You can also use slices of colored bell peppers to liven up a sandwich platter. Put some slices of yellow or red bell peppers across the border of the tray. They are an excellent color contrast to your brown or white bread.

When serving salmon salad, think about a couple of different alternatives. Line the bowl or plate with lettuce to the green shade, or cut up cherry tomatoes and place those across the rim of your plate or bowl. You may even sprinkle a bit of chopped parsley on the tuna salad for the green color. A few slices of orange bell pepper go a very long way in adding colour to a skillet or plate.

If you're creating a platter of biscuits, consider adding what I call embellishments to your platter. We buy colored jelly candies, chocolate kisses and red licorice bites. We scatter these sweets on the dish with the biscuits to liven it up. You could also mix and match cookies and brownies so your platter includes both beige and dark brown on it.

An additional thought for brownies is to sprinkle powdered sugar on top. Powdered sugar may conceal cracks and cut lines and create plain brownies look like elaborate brownies.