Celebration Boards with Meagan Brown: Making Everyday Moment Special
In Episode 143 of the Kitchen Confidante Podcast, Liren Baker talks with Maegan Brown about her book, Celebration Boards, her favorite styling trips, where she finds gorgeous serving pieces, and more!
Meagan Brown is the creative force behind some of the most beautiful and imaginative celebration boards I’ve seen, and her book, Celebration Boards, continues where last book, Beautiful Boards, left off. Moving beyond traditional cheese and charcuterie board, there are boards for breakfast, tea parties, holidays, global flavors, and even gifting — all designed to make entertaining feel a little more approachable and a whole lot more fun.
Her philosophy that “boards aren’t just for special occasions” is a beautiful reminder that we don’t need to wait for a birthday, a holiday, or some big milestone to gather the people we love and make an ordinary moment feel special.
In this episode, Meagan and I talk about the secrets to creating a beautiful board without getting overwhelmed, her signature BOARDS Method, her favorite styling tricks, and where she finds all those gorgeous serving pieces. We also dive into some of the boards in the book — from Eggs Benedict to ramen to a beautiful tea party — there is so much inspiration to have a little more fun around the table!
How can we get better at making ordinary, everyday moments feel worth celebrating?
It truly is about the people. It’s more about the people you bring together with the board than it is about the food.
“Don’t take it so seriously. Use what you have on hand. Find those easy ways to bring everyone together.”
Maegan Brown
So for example, this last weekend, we ended up staying home.
We were supposed to travel, but ended up staying home. Some friends caught wind of it, and I was like, “Come over.” We had hardly anything, and so I’m scrounging up what we could find, and I made a bunch of little mini boards throughout the night. We had a little mini cheese and charcuterie for the adults, and then we had a little snack board for the kids, and then I made a dessert board.
It turned into this party celebration. It felt like it was a special occasion with just a lot of friends coming over and getting together. So it’s more about making sure that you just open your home, let people in, and, and bring people together. Don’t feel so much pressure to make it just this huge complicated process of serving them, where you can put everything on a board.
Walk us through your BOARDS method for creating Celebration Boards.
I think after all these years of building boards, I realized, “I’ve gotta put this process down into something that’s easy for people to follow.” You can apply it to no matter what board you build, and it will turn out to be a great board. And so it really starts with your base.
The base can be anything. It can be a wooden board. It can be a sheet pan. It can be a platter. Whatever your base is, based on the number of people you’re serving is where you start. So you’ll have your base, and then you’ll organize all of your ingredients. So what all do you wanna put on the board? How much do you need based on the number of people you’re serving, the occasion that you’re serving it for, whether it be a appetizer or a meal or dessert, or is your crowd a hungry crowd? Are you serving a bunch of teenage boys who just will devour it? Just keep all of those factors in mind as to how much you need.
Then you start arranging it. In the book, I do show a lot of options because I want you to know you can pick and choose what works best for you and your crowd or what you have on hand. I just really wanted to give people the idea and the options to then go and make it their own. You can put the same ingredients in two or three different places so that as people are approaching the board, they can access a little bit of everything from every corner of it or from every angle of it, depending on how big the board is. Make it feel abundant, then fine-tune it. Make sure that everything is, has its place, and arrange if you need to squeeze in anything else, or if something feels too crowded, spread it out.
“I think people think that, a board takes a lot of effort, and it is an art, but food in itself is beautiful, and simply arranging it on a board with all of the different colors and textures really does the work for you.”
Maegan Brown
Garnish and finishing touches really elevates the board in a very easy, simple way. Finally serve and enjoy it!
Celebration Boards: 50 Creative Boards to Turn Any Occasion into a Celebration, by Maegan Brown (Rock Point, 2026).
Learn more
Listen to the full podcast episode with Maegan here. Learn more about Maegan at thebakermama.com and follow her on Instagram at @thebakermama
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