Tools and Tips for Holiday Entertaining

 

Hello, everyone!  How are you doing?  Are you looking forward to Halloween?  Well, you know as soon as Halloween is over, it will be time for the holidays and all that that entails.  I thought I would share some holiday entertaining tips with you today, just to get you prepared for what is to come!

~Most of the following I will be writing about is not very glamorous but, I hope it will be helpful nonetheless and since some of the material is not very pretty, I may be inserting holiday photos in a  "poetic license" sort of way ;).

My first and foremost entertaining tool for any gathering at any time of the year is a second refrigerator.  I know refrigerators are pricey items and are a luxury but, if you can find a basic model on sale, I promise you will find it to be worth its weight in gold as you navigate through the holiday entertaining season.  In my old house, I had a second refrigerator in the basement.  Right now, I am in refrigerator-deficit mode.  I only have a two-door old refrigerator at the moment.  We are in the process of purchasing a much larger new refrigerator but, it is a long story and a long process.  A story for another time :). If I had had one extra special wish in my old house, it would have been that the refrigerator be placed in the garage on the same floor as the kitchen. That would have lessened the number of times I would have had to go up and down the stairs. Aside from that little wish, that second refrigerator was a lifesaver during times of entertaining.  I could make extra ice and store it, make casseroles ahead of time and stash all that food away until I was ready to prepare or serve it. It even helps when your guests bring casseroles or desserts that need to be kept cold until they are ready to be served.  As I said--a lifesaver!

The second item(s) I find invaluable over the holidays are fold-up tables and chairs.  I have a few tables and chairs of my own but, for Thanksgiving a few years ago there were 19 of us so, I needed to borrow a few more from my son and daughter-in-law. Comfortable seating for your guests is an important component to any event so, it is best to plan ahead.  Thankfully, Christmas entertaining often is the carrying-a-little-plate-of-appetizers-around-as-you-mingle type of entertaining but, Christmas dinner is another story so, you might need to look for extra seating if you are hosting~

Other tools I find very helpful when entertaining large crowds are crock pots and tabletop electric hotplates.  These items are great for keeping food warm and making more room for the prep area of your kitchen.  For Thanksgiving I cook, mash and whip the potatoes before my guests arrive.  I place them in a large crock pot and set the whole assembly in an area out of the way until it is time for them to be served.  They turn out to be warm and quite delicious, if I do say so myself :).

My advice concerning these kinds of items is to think ahead, get them out of storage and have them all washed and ready before the day of your event.  Place them in an easily accessible spot where they can be grabbed when needed.

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On the same note, I like to get all my specialty and pretty serving dishes together, so they are accessible, as well.  The holidays are the perfect time to use all those beautiful platters and serving pieces you have been collecting all these years.  Plus, I find as guests arrive with their contributions to the meal, they may have forgotten to bring a dish on which to serve their appetizer or, even dessert so, it is great to be able to say, "I've got it covered."  It makes everyone more relaxed.

This next one is somewhat of a no-brainer but, here I go.  Setting up a designated beverage space is a nice thing to do, as well.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a large area but, if you can set up the beverage spot away from the cooking and prepping place, it can be very helpful and give you more breathing room in the kitchen. As with most hostesses, I find everyone congregates around the island in my kitchen.  It just so happens that this is where I serve my appetizers, as well.  So, having a side table set-up for drinks really helps move some of the traffic away from that area of the kitchen.  Make sure you have lots of ice, mixers, cut-up lemons and limes and glasses available for your guests.  This is something that can easily be set-up before your guests arrive lessening the last-minute stress that always seems to come no matter what you do!

I don't really want to admit this for many reasons, not the least of which would be environmental but, it can be very helpful during the holidays if hosting large crowds to use sturdy paper plates for the main meal.  I don't usually do this.  I usually use my fine China but, one Thanksgiving my husband and I had to bring my elderly mother home which meant a two-hour ride after the meal.  I had to leave the messy task of clean-up to my grown kids. I really didn't want to do that but, they were sweet and did all the messy work for me. I really do have great kids.  As I left my house that day, my son was hand washing my silverware.  Imagine that!

This brings me to another tip that I just discovered through a blog I follow.  She suggested putting all your dirty dishes in wash tubs and moving them out to the garage or elsewhere out of sight and doing them later when your guests have left. Make sure to fill them up with water so the dishes can soak making washing them all the easier. I thought that was a great idea, especially if you have guests who you don't see very often.  You don't want to waste visiting time doing dishes unless you are happy doing them together.

Another invaluable item I discovered is, of all things, clear garbage bags.  I have to say my husband and I fell upon this one by accident.  We usually use white garbage bags to line the waste bucket with but by mistake one time, we purchased the clear ones.  After a holiday meal one year I was putting away the silverware and discovered I was missing a spoon.  My husband soon set out to search through the garbage for the missing spoon, not a fun job!  Within minutes he had found it thanks to the clear bags.  He didn't even have to manually rummage through the gross garbage.  As I said, not very glamorous but immensely helpful!

Finally, the last item on my list of invaluable items for entertaining is flowers...of course!  I know flowers can easily be overlooked because of time constraints or even the feeling of a lack of talent in the floral arranging area but, I can tell you, adding flowers to your table or other areas of your home adds a festive feel to the whole occasion and is well worth the effort.  You can easily buy a bunch of flowers already arranged at the grocery store.  Take them home.  Cut the stems off and plunk them into a vase.  Voila!  You are done!  I do admit I spent a little more time than that when arranging my flowers but, you get the point ;).

I hope you found something in my little list of entertaining tools and tips to help you with your soon-to-be upcoming holiday entertaining.  I always try to find ways to make the holidays as stress-free as possible.  I don't always achieve that goal but, I do try.

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