Dinner Party Ideas

The holiday season is quickly approaching and that means that it is time for gatherings that include friends, family and co-workers. In the past I have tried to hold one large party that would include people from all the categories of my life. I would invite people from work, relatives, neighbors and people from church. Of course I would also include long time friends. I found that these large parities were difficult to prepare for as well as manage. I decided to search out new dinner party ideas. I wanted to have a plan so that I would be able to enjoy the gatherings and insure that the guests were also having a good time. I needed dinner party ideas that would have a more relaxed feeling, rather than my husband and I spending time introducing people and spending the majority of our time in the kitchen area.

I began by looking in an entertaining cookbook that I own as well as looking up different websites from the Food Network as well as other entertaining resources. I found several dinner party ideas that I thought would work for the size of our home as well as our guest list. There is a wealth of information available so I weeded through the dinner party ideas until I found three that I liked and then shared them with my husband. Our first thought was that instead of having one large party we would have two or three smaller gatherings. This would make the time more enjoyable for us as well as giving our guests more room to move around. We decided that we would have one gathering for relatives. This gathering would be very relaxed. My sisters and sister-in-laws always ask what they can bring so we decided that this party would be pot luck. I told everyone that we would provide shredded turkey and cold cuts for sandwiches. Everyone was asked to bring a dish to share. The other two dinner party ideas that we liked were a buffet dinner as well as an Italian dinner theme. Both ideas featured foods that were made a head of time and heated prior to serving. The other gatherings will include people we work with and then neighbors, friends and church people. These are the groups that seem to mingle together at the large party.

We are looking forward to trying our new dinner party ideas to see if we will have a chance to enjoy the evenings with the smaller groups.