You’ve worked your way diligently through nine chapters, picked up a bunch of Hip Tricks, and are all the wiser for it. Your efforts in creative problem solving in every area of the house deserve to be shown off. You’re now ready for what is hands-down the most fun part of housekeeping: parties!
Get people into your home to eat together and to share and enjoy your space. The happy home is all about momentum, so invite all your nearest and dearest, pronto.
Good reasons to invite people over:
Showing off. It’s okay, I give you permission to enjoy showing off. When you work hard at making your house homey, people notice. You can be humble in response to compliments, but always accept praise.
Incentive to clean. I (usually) clean when guests are coming over. The more you invite people over, the more you clean. The more you clean, the less of a burden it becomes.
Small gatherings are fun and are cheaper for everyone involved (as opposed to going out for drinks at a bar). At one of our recent dinner parties we fed eight people, appetizers and desserts included, for $70. You can’t even get a sandwich in some places for $9.
You’ll get invited to parties. It’s infectious amongst friends. Once you host one, your friends will probably reciprocate.
As you’ve possibly gleaned from reading the rest of the chapters in this book, I’m all for relaxing about everything, and fancying things up as you’re ready (or not, if you don’t really care). No one is going to judge you by the napkins at your dinner party. If they do, you don’t want to be friends with them anyway.
I’m just saying, don’t forgo the dinner party because you have a small apartment or only five plates. You’ve spent enough time with this book to know that simple, cost-effective solutions to home problems are usually just a matter of stopping for a few moments to think it through.
Even people who do special events planning as their profession (like I used to) will assume the harried frenzy of working through hosting preparations. The goal is to have ambiance, comfort, and style in mind at the outset. As the party careens into being, attachments to fancy will start to fade and the focus will become providing a chair, fork, and plate to everyone, pretty cloth napkins optional. Flexibility is the single most important characteristic to acquire as a host; what once seemed so important might need to take a backseat to other practical considerations.
I’ll shed some light on the basics of opening your house up to others. There are three kinds of entertaining I’ll cover here, each increasing gradually in terms of planning and complexity:
- Happy houseguests
- Pimped-out personal parties (dinner or tea parties)
- Savvy skill-sharing parties (canning, sewing, soap making, silkscreening, yodeling, whatever)
Go forth and celebrate! Be proud of your house—you deserve it. We’ll wrap up the chapter with a few essential things to take away after you close this book so you’ll be prepared for any situation you encounter in real life.
Houseguests in Your Happy Home
Having friends and family stay at your house may conjure a number of different emotions, ranging from genuine excitement to loathing and dread.
Houseguest hip list:
Master the art of welcoming someone without waiting on them. There’s a fine balance between being welcoming and giving off wait-staff vibes. Show your guests where things are so they can help themselves and feel right at home.
Prepare your guests’ bed in advance, if possible. It shows that you thought about them and took a few extra minutes ahead of their arrival to make them feel welcome.
Make (and eat) breakfast. Since you already do sit-down breakfast (Chapter 8 rubbed off on you, wink, wink), it’s not hard to add a coffee cup and seat at the table for your houseguest.
Have a spare key so guests can come and go as they please.
Relax.
In most cases, you’re not obliged to hang with them 24/7 (in-laws may be the exception here). Give yourself some space and let them do their own thing.
Personal Parties
Hosting intimate gatherings, small dinner parties, and events like book club or a little cocktail party is not as hard as you might think. You’ll do some work on the front end, but then your only job is to enjoy your company and accept praise for how cool your house is. The more you host these kinds of things, the easier it becomes. The learning curve is steep at first, but with time you can crank out a thoughtfully planned party in a few hours.
Entertaining hip list:
Give a heads-up with a save-the-date notice. A simple email will suffice to help people block out time for your event on their calendars. Send another email a week before the event with your address, any reminders for things to bring, and other specifics not included in the save-the-date message.
Use real dishes. Hit up the thrift store for an extra stash of flatware and plates to pull out on party occasions.
Have enough chairs for everyone or remove chairs altogether.
Utilize self-serve as often as possible or appropriate.
The snack and drink station is my favorite way to put guests to the task of making themselves feel welcome. If you’re not going to be nearby, you can always make a little tent note (by folding over an index card) saying, “Ice is in the freezer, help yourself!”
Hip Trick
Turn a flat of canning jars into perfect party cups. Guests can Sharpie their names onto half-pint or pint-sized mason jars (to keep track of whose glass belongs to whom). As you learned in Chapter 1, you can remove the writing the next day with a swab of rubbing alcohol and then promptly fill the jars with homemade jam.
Who needs matching cups anyway? Your diverse thrift store assortment adds character to the party and makes it easier for guests to remember which cup is theirs.
Host the party with another person. That person might be your spouse, best friend, upstairs neighbor, whomever. Just be sure that you have someone else to help with cooking or planning (whichever you don’t do the best). I’m the special projects coordinator at my house, so my girlfriend always steps up with the main course, and I’ve got a pie, homemade ice cream, or some other sweet treat up my sleeve.
For inspiring and crowd-pleasing dishes to serve at dinner parties, please consult my friends Zora O’Neill and Tamara Reynolds. Their book Forking Fantastic!: Put the Party Back in Dinner Party is everything it claims to be and will keep you laughing as you follow their crowd-pleasing recipes.
Word to the Wise
Exercise a bit of potluck common sense and be sure to query (or assign) guests on what they plan to bring. Leaving things up in the air can leave you with eight bowls of salsa and no salad or dessert. As potluck host, usually you’ll provide the main dish, but it’s flexible. In the case of BBQ potlucks you can ask guests to bring their grillables. Getting a feel for what’s coming can help make the feast a success.
Logistics:
It’s all in the Details
Table. This is the pivotal point of any gathering. If you’re not sitting directly at it, then the food is lined up on it, and people will stand around it like a campfire all evening. Revisit Chapter 7 for creative ways to make a couple smaller tables into a larger one. Of the many sit-down gatherings we’ve hosted in our 800-square-foot apartment, never once have my guests noticed a sneaky plank of plywood hiding out underneath the tablecloth. One day I’ll have a luxurious, extendable dining room table (and a dining room), but for now it’s fun to be creative with what I’ve got.
Chairs. Borrow as many as you can from your neighbors. Definitely decline if they have fancy upholstered chairs that might serve as magnets for wine or food (you don’t want to spend the next day taking a chair to the dry cleaners). We like to pick up chairs from garage sales and the roadside whenever we see good ones. You can always buy a folding set to have on hand for when dinner expands into a jolly good time.
If you have enough chairs, why not make it a sit-down kind of thing? If you don’t have enough chairs, it’s totally fine to let guests grab a plate of food and find spots around the house. Lining up available chairs in advance and positioning them in a comfortable conversation shape (a crescent or slight curve so guests can chat) helps with the flow of getting food, sitting down, and eating it.
Linen and swag. Buy that vinyl Christmas-print tablecloth that’s on sale at the flea market or thrift store. I know it’s cheesy, but it never hurts to give your tabletop an extra layer of protection. Throw on a pretty tablecloth to hide Santa or display that vinyl number outright at craft parties; getting soap base off the vinyl will be much easier than getting it off cloth.
Owning a dark-colored dinner party tablecloth will make you feel like a genius every time you do laundry after a dinner party. I found mine at the thrift store for $4; it’s a long, deep purple banquet tablecloth.
Wash (or have ready) all plates, cups, and flatware the night before so you can spend your time the day of the party doing other things around the house.
Test. Try sitting at every seat around your makeshift table so you know what each person will see and feel. Maybe you’ll need to shift a setting a bit to the left since guests have knees they’ll probably want to put under the table.
Plan. Having a play-by-play action plan is usually not necessary in informal dinner gatherings you’ll host, but knowing that you’re going to need to do some dishes in order for guests to have a clean dessert plate is important not to overlook. Zora and Tamara hire a dishwasher for their Sunday night dinners to take the stress off the hosts and keep the clean dishes coming; the money that guests contribute for food goes toward the cost of hiring someone for the evening. Usually at smaller gatherings, a pal will step up in the break between dinner and dessert and offer to do some dishes, to which my response is always, “I’ll dry!”
How to Set the Table
For sit-down civilized dinner, the simplest version goes like this: Napkin on left, fork on napkin. Plate in center. Knife blade facing the plate on the right side of the setting. I’ve always needed to check because I could never remember. The Joy of Cooking has more elegant alternatives should you need them, like for two-fork occasions, and can tell you what the hell to do with a dessert spoon (though there’s no input given on where to find room on your makeshift table for a fancy table setting).
The strategic placement of linens makes things seem more official. I like to demarcate the beverage station with a pretty blue tea towel, sometimes placing cups there and other times using it to house tea pitchers or wine bottles. (Since you aced Chapter 6, you now know how to remove any wine dribbles in the event any of your linens get spotted.)
Word to the Wise
Set the table way in advance (like the night before). This is my favorite part of entertaining because I get to pull out all my pretty scavenged cups, napkins, and plates. Or if this isn’t your bag, then forget about it. Have guests help you set the table to keep them occupied before it’s time to eat.
Hip Trick
Ever sit down at a tightly set table and wonder which drinking glass is yours? A sassy friend once showed me how to tell. Make night-vision glasses with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands; your left hand forms a lowercase b (for bread) and your right hand forms a lowercase d (for drink). Never leave home without your thumbs.
Assignments on Arrival
The first guests to arrive get assignments at my house. The first person gets set up on drinks and assigned as beverage coordinator. The second person to arrive becomes designated door answerer and greeter. The two people get to know each other (if they don’t already), and your arriving guests are managed smoothly. You can continue to run around in a frenzy and attempt to look calm.
You’ll have more fun with it if you forget any preconceived notions of what a dinner party should be like. The most successful party is not based on fancy food, décor, matching chairs, or other crap. Nope, dinner party success is solely based on friends sitting around talking together over food you made.
Craft and Knowledge-Share Parties
Hosting skill share parties is a great way to get people in your house and learn something new and handy while you’re at it. All skill share parties have a few things in common:
Plan/host it with at least one person who actually knows the craft/skill in question (if you don’t already know how to do it yourself).
Location, location, location. Said person who knows what he or she is doing will be crucial in determining if your house will work well for the proposed activity. If the party requires a lot of counter space and your countertop is the size of a small cutting board, don’t despair, just talk to your pals about possibly using their houses. Your pad might work for a sewing party where guests use their laps as workspace.
You’ll need to either provide supplies for everyone or provide a supply list that guests must bring in order to participate. Assigning one or two people to supplies acquisition and then having guests pay their share is a good way to split the costs collectively and avoid logistical mayhem.
Snacks and beverages are always a good idea. Swing it potluck or BYOB style, or ask guests to chip in a couple of dollars to cover you at the grocery or liquor store.
Craft and knowledge-share parties can be any size, from bigger, organized ordeals to small, impromptu gatherings. Remember, even one or two friends (and their knitting needles) can make it a party.
Here are a few ideas for parties to get you started, or simply build a party around anything that you’ve been itching to learn—maybe silk screening, pasta making, or bread baking. Or just revive the stitch-and-bitch gathering by offering to host.
Soap Party
Last fall, my friends Liz, Adriana, and I hosted a soap party at my house where we learned (via Liz) and practiced the melt and pour soap-making method. We each brought and shared things to jazz up our soap, like essential oils, spices such as turmeric and paprika for color, and dried flowers and pretty herbs for character. A share of the soap base ended up costing $7 per person, which sufficed to make a huge stash of handmade presents for everyone on our holiday shopping lists. Counter space and access to a few burners on the stovetop is a must for this party.
Word to the Wise
In the case of splitting supply costs among attendees, let guests know when they RSVP that they will still be responsible for their share of the costs if they flake or cancel at the last minute. In some cities or circles this won’t be an issue at all, but in other places it’s good to let people know ahead of time so that you or the rest of the guests don’t get stuck covering the cost.
Sewing Party
I hosted a sewing party at my friend (and brilliant seamstress) Briana’s house. Attendees were of all different skill levels, from I’ve-never-dared-step-so-close-to-a-sewing-machine to yeah-I’ll-add-ruffles-to-that-no-biggie. I’m definitely in the former category, so the collective vibes from a group of ladies knocking out mending and tackling creative fabric projects was just what I needed to inspire me. I brought over a bunch of homemade goodies (to keep costs low) and wine and asked guests to chip in $10 to cover those costs plus Briana’s time in teaching many of us the ropes on her sewing machine.
This is a great party to host in smaller apartments because guests are (for the most part) stationed in one spot and don’t need much space beyond the occasional floor or bed for folding or cutting fabric.
Canning Party
This fall I hosted a canning party in conjunction with the Canning Across America collective’s Canvolution weekend, where home canners participate in a weekend of putting food up collectively spanning all areas of the country. I enlisted my favorite East Coast preserver ladies—Audra from the blog Doris and Jilly Cook and Marisa from the Food in Jars blog—and the three of us hosted our favorite recipes and acquired the requisite supplies and ingredients. There were ten of us in total, skill levels ranging from newbies to old hats. At the end of the day we split the costs, each paying $10 for a share of the supplies, and everyone went home with two pint jars of pickled green beans, a half pint of peach chutney, a quarter pint of plum lemon jam, and a quarter pint of ketchup.
You don’t have to invite famous people over in order to host a kick-ass canning party; it’s just a fun way to share what you’ve learned in the kitchen with friends. Everyone helps with the work and then everyone goes home with tasty foods in jars. If it’s going to be more than just a few of you, you’ll need a big enough kitchen, with ample counter space and plenty of cooling and ventilation, since all four burners will be going at once.
Collage Party
A few years ago I got the idea to invite people over to tear up magazines and fun fancy paper (which I always seem to have an excess of), share glue sticks, and drink tea. I came up with the collage and tea party idea because it seemed like a shame that no one had time for creativity in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It was cool to see friends who swear by the motto “I’m not creative” with their tongues out, poised in concentration, over a no-pressure collage. I fit eight people (and their respective eight floor fans of torn scraps) into my apartment’s tiny living room. (Sometimes moving furniture out of the living room is the best way to open your small space to guests.)
I was bummed when the group outgrew my house, though of course delighted that more people were keen on the slow art of glue sticks. But my local library offered free use of their meeting rooms (when planned way in advance). We just made sure to clean up all the little scraps that are inevitable in a paper massacre party.
Host a Food Swap
Food swaps are a great way to diversify your pantry while getting to know your neighbors and fellow make-it-yourself community. Our group trades swappable items like loaves of bread, jars of preserves, backyard-chicken eggs, portions of soup, packages of homemade candy, and the like.
Set up your swap rules however you please. We decided to keep things simple and only stick with food items that YOU made (not the farmers’ market jam mistresses, not the local artisan baker, etc.). [There are larger share groups called time banks that exist for members to swap services, skills, and sometimes goods. Check the resources section at the end of the chapter to learn more about these groups or to find one in your area.]
Arrange for attendees to bring a homemade potluck item in addition to their swap goods so there will be snacks, and you’re not put out to feed and entertain 20 people. Food people like to bring food to events, trust me. Everyone wants to show off something they took the time to prepare. Adding a potluck feature also opens the event to people who maybe don’t have a swap item, but would like to join in the food fun with a group of like-minded friends.
The Take-Away
Keep learning, hip people! Beginners, I promise you, if you keep with it, there’s nothing that won’t become normal in your house.
The nature of this project has kept me on my toes for the past year. With every new skill I picked up (including second, third, tenth attempts doing things) I began to realize that everything I want to say is not possibly going to fit into a single book. There are always new things to learn and new and better ways of doing things. It all boils down to the wise words of Eleanor Roosevelt: You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Here’s a short list of things to take with you into the homemaking endeavors that intimidate you the most:
Approach the project with confidence. Your attitude is likely the single most inhibiting factor in the success of whatever you’re attempting to accomplish. Choosing to succeed does wonders. Of course failure will still happen, but at least you’re not gearing toward it from the onset.
Find mentors. Follow in the footsteps of people who know more than you and whom you admire. Take time to actually read their books (or blogs) and remember that even they started somewhere.
Take stock. Stop every now and then to appreciate the view from where you’ve climbed. When I grumble about the loads of extra dishes that accumulate after ice cream or bread making, I take a minute to look around at my kitchen or gawk inside my fridge at the jars of homemade goodies. I remember that not so long ago none of this stuff existed in my house. And I never fail to swell with secret pride when I offer guests a bowl of homemade ice cream. It feels good to say, “I made this.” Enjoy it.
Teach someone else. Via the Internet, your kitchen, or while in line at the hardware store. We all inspire each other in different ways. Showing someone the art of thrift shopping, compost piling, or fridge pickling could unlock the home front for someone else. Two happy homies in their homes now, instead of one.
Give yourself a break. You’re human. There is no such thing as perfect. Your best effort is always good enough. Putting your feet up and ignoring [insert task-at-hand here] is sometimes what has to be done. Give it your best, and if necessary, try again tomorrow.
Resources
Books
Forking Fantastic!: Put the Party Back in Dinner Party by Zora O’Neill and Tamara Reynolds.
These ladies will crack you up and remind you not to worry about silly details. Dinner parties are supposed to be about food and friends, not napkins.
The Joy of Cooking (any edition).
Great illustrations of where things go on the table should you decide to up the fancy ante.
The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow.
Great ideas and resources for planning a meal share or potluck event.
Put ’Em Up: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook by Sherri Brooks Vinton.
She has a great little section about working in groups on canning projects, complete with task lists for different types of recipes.
Web
timebanks.org
Join (or start) a time bank, an unconventional way to barter and share skills with people in your community.