When it comes to hosting around the holidays, the to-do lists are endless. Not only are you planning and preparing the meal, but you are often times cleaning your home for guests, finishing the last bit of decorating, and Christmas shopping for your family, neighbors and colleagues. If you are like me, you also have a page long holiday bucket list of festive Christmas activities that you want to enjoy with your friends and family! In order to make the most of it and enjoy these precious moments with your family, let’s get all of the holiday decorating done in advance!
One of my favorite parts of the house to decorate for Christmas is the dining room table. I love setting the table weeks in advance. There is just something glamorous about having the table set for the whole season. It brings the entire house together and is an easy space to be creative and show your personality and holiday style.
I could spend hours and hours perusing place setting ideas and creative centerpieces for Christmas. In fact, I often do! So I have compiled some of my favorite Christmas tablescapes for you that have helped inspire my table this season! I hope you enjoy these and find some inspiration for your Christmas dinner table as well!
Family, food, friends and football… This is what truly creates a perfect Thanksgiving!
So, of course, they were all featured in this year’s wonderful Friendsgiving party — which also happened to be festive, fabulous and FUN! 🙂 I hosted a group of friends for a potluck dinner, so they came with some tasty Thanksgiving bites and libations. But, every hostess has a few delicious ideas in mind for her dinners, so I had a small menu laid out in addition to what my guests brought to the table!
The fall festivities wouldn’t have been complete without the gorgeous farm table, chairs and place settings provided by my friends at Celebration Event Rental. The silvers, golds and coppers were complemented perfectly by the rich-colored woods in the table and my homemade centerpiece … Swoon. Seriously, y’all.
Two worlds collided at the fall party I recently hosted at my favorite gift and floral store in Dallas: My favorite shop and some of my favorite girls. The T Shop in Lakewood was generous enough to welcome the Circle Seven Five ladies and me into the shop for a hostess gift-making party!
In case you are not local or have not heard of Circle Seven Five, CSF is an absolutely amazing group of young professional Dallas women founded by the lovely Cassidy in order to help form friendships and a sense of community and belonging amongst a bustling city. If you are in your mid- twenties, you know how incredibly difficult it can be to make new and meaningful friendships, but through fun events at local shops, restaurants, work-out studios, etc., CSF helps to form these types of friendships and connections. I have absolutely loved being a part of this organization, and if you are in Dallas, I highly recommend looking into it! Plus, I got to host this amazing party for the CSF girls!
The T Shop is my absolute favorite local gift and flower shop here in Dallas. Owned by the incredible Lori Trent, she has created the most luxurious and beautiful boutique in Lakewood. If you are looking for a flower arrangement or gift for a party or a florist for your wedding, The T Shop is your place. It is my go-to location for all of my gifting needs, plus her arrangements are absolutely amazing. Lori and her team are so detail-oriented and every bouquet comes out looking like it was styled for a magazine. My mom sent me my first flower arrangement from the T Shop, and I kid you not, I emailed Lori and told her how in love with her flowers I was, and I wanted her to do my wedding one day! Seriously, she is amazing!
We started the fall festivities with a themed cocktail party, where I served a variety of appetizers and a signature drink. The space didn’t call for a full dinner, but the event was at 6 p.m. on a weeknight, so I didn’t want the CSF ladies to leave hungry! Some of the girls were only acquaintances, so I wanted to make sure there was an assortment of snacks to accompany the libations.
I came up with this tasty and festive menu that was an absolute hit amongst the girls!
The CSF ladies enjoyed their drinks and bites while mingling and shopping around the store for fun birthday or hostess gifts. The store owner’s daughter, Kiley, and I then gave a fun presentation to the girls about how to give the perfect hostess gift. We talked all about when gifts are appropriate, what types to give, and how you can personalize it for each hostess.
Your weekly gift guide to help inspire you and make your gift buying process a little bit easier this season!
With the holidays coming up, I’m sure your schedule is starting to fill up with lots of fun parties and get togethers! Whether you are going to a dinner party at your colleague’s house, meeting your boyfriend’s parents, or going to stay with friends or family over the holidays, it is always important to bring a gift to thank them for their hospitality!
Here is the perfect holiday gift guide for the hostess who loves to entertain!
It is finally football season y’all! One of the best times of the year (besides Christmas, of course)! That means weekends filled with tailgates and game watching parties, cheering on your favorite teams and enjoying yummy football snacks!
During a TCU home game weekend, you will find us camping out on Saturday’s near Amon G. Carter Stadium jumping between tailgates and reminiscing with friends. However, away game weekends are a little bit harder to centrally gather all of our friends. Of course, there are always TCU game watching parties at the local bars, but sometimes it is nice to enjoy the game from the comfort of your home with some good friends!
I recently hosted a TCU game watching party at my apartment with about 20 of our friends. Kick off was at 3:45pm, so I had all morning to prepare my favorite game watching appetizers for our guests. Football snacks are the epitome of comfort food, so it is usually pretty easy to find some delicious warm dips, sliders, and nachos that the crowd will love. After a little bit of thought into each of my guest’s taste preferences, I came up with this delicious menu that was an absolute hit!
When hosting a game watching party, I recommend providing 4 to 5 appetizers (I usually divide the size of the party by 3 to determine how many appetizers…so 15 people attending divided by 3 equals 5 appetizers) and asking everyone to bring their favorite snack and beer as well. That way, you know for sure that you have the food handled in case someone forgets, and everyone else’s snacks are bonus! This menu was pretty simple and can be done the day of the party. However, since everything the day of a party takes about 25% longer than expected, I like to prepare as much as I can the night before. This menu is the perfect balance of night before and day of preparation.
I started off the night before making the Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupcakes. These can easily be refrigerated in an airtight container overnight, so you don’t have to worry for one minute about them the day of your party! The Spinach Artichoke Dip is also an easy appetizer to make the night before and refrigerate. Then all you have to do is pop it in the oven for about an hour before the party and serve!
As far as the day of goes, I woke up a little early to make the BBQ Pulled Chicken Sliders. These are an absolute breeze because they only take about 5 minutes of preparation and then the crock-pot will take over for the next 6-8 hours. Then all you have to do is assemble and enjoy! The majority of the day of preparation is for the Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Poppers, the Buffalo Chicken Wonton Cups , the Buffalo Chicken Nachos, and the Cinnamon Brown Sugar Popcorn. Each of these appetizers take about 45 minutes of preparation and cooking, so I would recommend starting each of these snacks about 2 hours prior to kick-off.
This menu is absolutely delicious and there is sure to be something that will please everyone!
This is the perfect, sure-to-impress menu for a date night or your last minute dinner guest.
In an ideal world all of our dinner parties would be on a Saturday or Sunday night with all the time in the world to prepare. However, we all know that with everyone’s busy schedules we don’t always get that much notice or have that much time to prepare. Sometimes you get word of a last minute dinner guest or the only available time to have family or friends over for dinner is on a weeknight after a busy day at the office.
Weeknight dinner parties are abundant at my house, as the only nights that line up for me and my boyfriend are during the workweek. Therefore, I always look for easy recipes that I can prepare the night before or over the weekend, yet are still fresh and beautiful and only require a little bit of day-of cooking. This simple and classy dinner party menu can easily be prepared last minute and is the perfect solution when you are short on time. Plus it is always a crowd pleaser and is sure-to-impress your guests!
I recently served this menu on a Monday night for a dinner party with my boyfriend and his family. Of course I wanted to make the best impression possible and wanted the meal to be perfect. With the easy Sunday night prep and table setup and the limited time on Monday this menu took to pull together, the night was seamless! It was the perfect combination of simple and classy that looked formal enough but not like I tried too hard.
When it comes to hosting a dinner party, it is all about the details! One of my personal favorite details and part of the dinner party planning process is designing the tablescape. Whether you are hosting a casual weeknight meal or a festive fall gathering, the dining room table is where everyone comes together. The way you set the table can determine the formality and mood of the entire evening, so this is not a detail that you want to overlook!
I recently hosted a simple and classy dinner party for my boyfriend and his family. I found tons of inspiration from these dinner party tablescapes, and I hope they inspire you as well!
Introduction from Kate: I am so excited to introduce my good friend Hunter Sprague. Hunter is a wine connoisseur who believes that no dinner party is complete without good wine. He has taught me so much about the art of wine pairing, and I am honored that he is sharing with us today! I know his insight and knowledge have been so helpful for me in planning my dinner parties, and I hope it does the same for you! So take it away, Hunter!
Everyone loves to wine and dine every now and again… I think that’s scientific fact. Thus, the quintessential dinner party needs an ample amount of vino for the guests. There’s a lot more to it, though, than pouring a glass of Two-Buck Chuck and calling it a night (save that for the kick-your-feet-up-and-relax evening the day after the party. You earned it).
You’ve likely spent all week preparing — and using recipes from The Everyday Hostess, obviously — so you’re not going to pair your carefully-crafted appetizers and entrées with the first thing you see on the shelf. That’s where I come in. I’ve provided some guidelines to keep front of mind when planning your next dinner party:
Kick the night off with some bubbly. It’s a crowd-pleaser, and it pairs with any appetizer on this blog. I’d personally recommend Prosecco. It’s light, fruity, and reasonably priced. Anything from Italy in the $10-$25 price range will surely be a hit. Nobody wants to be at the dinner party that runs out of sparkling wine, so play it safe here. Any extras can be saved for your next brunch party or any after-dinner entertainment.
Once all the guests have arrived and the food starts coming out, there’s a ton of variation on what wines to open, when to open them, and what to pair them with. There’s a lot to think about. But I’ve got your back.
One of my favorite traditions that my friends and I started post college was Sunday night “family dinners.” I started to realize after graduation how hard it was to get everyone together in one place on a regular basis. Between all of our work and travel schedules, it is hard to have a regular Friday night dinner or weekly happy hour, so we started doing Sunday night dinners since it always seems to be a quieter night for people.
Unfortunately, during the summer months, Sunday night dinners have slowed as many of us have been gone for summer vacations and such, so I decided to host a Sunday brunch to get everyone back together. Here’s the delectable menu and spread we had for a party of about 15 people:
The thing about brunch parties is that you either have to wake up super early or do some major prep the night before. I am not the biggest morning person, so I definitely prefer the night before prep. This menu was easy to make beforehand, and, if you do it right, it looks like you have been awake for hours by the time your guests arrive.
Mimosas are the perfect addition to any brunch or bridal shower! Such a simple cocktail, yet it is so fun and a total crowd pleaser!
Mimosas consist of an equal part of champagne and citrus juice and then topped with a little fresh fruit. Of course there is the classic mimosa with champagne and orange juice, but there are so many fun ways to spice it up a bit and make your mimosa bar a little more unique!
Start by considering how many people you want your mimosa bar to serve. I usually yield about 8 servings per champagne bottle. Then select an assortment of juices. Orange juice is always a necessity, but instead of buying multiple orange juices, mix it up a little and add some other types of juices. Pomegranate, raspberry, blueberry, limeade, and grapefruit juice all make beautiful mimosas!
Presentation is key, so pull out some fun champagne flutes and top your mimosa with some fresh fruit. Sliced oranges, raspberries, lemons, strawberries, and cranberries all make beautiful additions.
