Christmas Wrapped

I hate public speaking. I love throwing parties. I have a friend who would speak in front of a crowd of angry cougars happily and she’d win them over, but she hates throwing parties. The thing these have in common is the only way either one gets easier is doing it a bunch of times.

Each year my neighborhood hosts a Progressive Dinner at the holidays. A Progressive Dinner is a nice way to celebrate the holidays with your neighbors without putting the job of having a neighborhood party on one host. Some people sign up to host a course of the meal: appetizers, soup, salad, main dish and dessert. The rest of the people volunteer to bring the food, except for the main dish, that is most easily made at the host’s house. Last year my husband and I offered our house up for the main dish and dessert part of the meal.

 

Decide what you want the party to look like.

The nicest thing about planning a holiday party is that we always want our house to be decorated for the holidays anyway. This means we don’t have to go above and beyond what our house would normally look like for the holiday to get it ready for the party, we also don’t have the hassle of putting up decorations for just one night.

 

Be Flexible About Space

My house is laid out with a large kitchen and dining area that are open to each other. For 6-8 people it’s plenty of room for dining, but for 24 people it wouldn’t work. Unless we were hosting a pie eating contest and no one needed to use their hands at the table.

Next to our dining room is a larger living room where we don’t have a lot of furniture, we moved last year from a much smaller space, making it easy to transform the room into a dining room.

With borrowed long banquet tables we were able to create a long dining table with our Christmas tree, a crackling fire and decorated mantel as a back drop for the meal. For no extra money.

We moved our living room sofa into the dining area of our kitchen, creating a great lounge area for chatting and mingling, since guest always congregate in the kitchen anyway.

 

To Save Money, Aim For ‘Simply Elegant’

To decorate I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on extra decorations and the best way I know to do this, and make it look beautiful, is to keep everything very simple.

I borrowed three long white tablecloths from a neighbor and purchased four low glass vases to put on the tables.

Then, while out getting food for the party, I found white hydrangeas. In December! I would’ve rather had a bright color bloom, but they were $10 for 2 stems with 4 big bunches of blooms. I ended up buying two packs, each pack filled two of my vases.

So, to add color, while still paying the price that made sense for this party, I added cranberries to the water in the vases. This added color and was more than cheap because I’d bought these cranberries at Thanksgiving and didn’t use them all. Even if you don’t think ahead, a pack of cranberries is around $1.75 at the market during the fall/winter season.

We rented plates and flatware in white and the result, even with the cranberries was still a little, well, white.

I also found a roll of red ribbon with my christmas stuff I’d bought on clearance the year before. I used it to create a thin runner down the all white table. On top of the runner we used all the votive holders, around 20, we had left from our wedding reception 10 years ago.

We ended up with a great looking table for around $25.

This is the table all set for the party with the rest of our holiday decorations. You should definitely move here.

The best way to throw a party is to remember everything doesn’t have to be perfect. Nothing kills a party faster than a stressed out host. My mantra is “Whatever gets done is what gets done.” After that? A cocktail and enjoy the night.