Hello Everybody!
There are about more or less 20 days to Christmas… and in every city is already Christmas time, at every corner you can see little lights, angels, Santa Claus and Christmas songs everywhere! Definitely a magic moment… yes, but also really stressing days! December is the start for all the races: a race for the perfect gift, a race for the tree and the decorations, a race for the Christmas dinner, a race for to book the vacations, a race for the perfect outfit for the parties… we need some plan and organization, otherwise the future days became a hells days!
We have to start and to learn how to manage some topics of this holydays “efficiently”, in other words how to obtain the best result without stress! In this post and in the next posts I’ll talk about how manage a Christmas Party at home, I’ll suggest some original idea for your Christmas presents, and I’ll show some tricks to make some DIY decorations and Home Made gif. If you are interested in this kink of suggestion continue reading! So let’s start!
Christmas in family…
According with the traditions, we spent Christmas in family… What about friends? Why don’t we have a party with friends? Isn’t the truth that friend are like a family we choosen? Here there are some advice to ave a perfect Christmas Party with friends!
Following the To Do List with out tasks:
- The right Date;
- The Invitation cards;
- Menu
- The dinner table;
- Good ambient;
- Gift zone;
- Games and activities;
- Gift for the guests.
1. The Right Date
The first thing to do is to find a perfect date, according with our needs and the need and 
meeting of our friends. The days I prefer are the ones really close to Christmas Day because most of vacation periods start in these days and the spirit of Christmas is high. We aren’t the only one who prepare a Christmas party and, because of it, we have to choose the date early and communicate it to our friends as soon as possible.
2. Invitation Cards
When we have the date and the list of guest to invite, we can prepare the invitation cards. As usual we can choose a traditional cards or electronic invitation like Email or to create an event in a social like Facebook or Google+ or whatever. If we choose a paper cards we can buy them, or we can create our customized invitation cards. For example we can use some picture (our new born or our puppy or kitten with Santa hat) or draw by ourselves something, we can also use different design and forms like trees, cookies or snowmans. If we use electronic invitation we can customize them working on the background, the attachments, the fonts and the music!
3. Menu
Maybe the menu is the most difficult task. At the beginning we have to decide the type of our dinner: formal dinner or informal buffet. The second step is to decide the courses and, based on them, to write our shopping list. Organization is the key of the success! It is better to choose the dishes that not require to work in the kitchen meanwhile our guests are enjoying at the party! It is necessary to arrange in advance all the thinks that we can prepare the days before the dinner. I suggest to choose traditional and simply dishes. It’s not a good idea test new dishes never cook before at the last minute! It’s a good choice to try to cook our dinner in the days before the party. Pay attention of the dishes presentation because it has the same importance of the taste, sometime! It’s useless cook awesome courses if there isn’t a good presentation for them!
4. The Dinner Table
In the days before the party, we have to think about the appearance of the table. We have to check that the tablecloth and the napkins are perfect clean and ironed, that we have enough dishes and glasses cutlery and they are all perfect. If we want a perfect dinner we must decorate appropriately the table, with a centerpiece, placeholders.
In this picture I show you an example of standard “mise en place”. As you can see, I decided to eliminate the underplate and the napkin. I’ve decided it because this two elements can change based on the particular event. It is a good idea to choose the underplate according with the color of the table cloth. For a Christmas dinner table, the perfect color combinations are Red and Gold and Blue and Silver, but also White and Gold is really polished. The napkin: always in accordance with the colours of the table cloth, we have different options. For example, if our dinner is not really formal we can fold our napkins and create a little Christmas tree with them. If we want something more classic, we can fold the napkins to create a fan using some napkin rings.
The centerpiece: we can use our fantasy for it! We can choose flowers, candles, mistletoe butcher’s broom and pine cones… It’s up to us! The most important things to remember are: the dimension of the centerpiece must be fitting with the dimension of the table; It does not to be too high and because of it to block the guests to see each others; It must be in balance with the table cloth, and the other table’s decorations.
Placeholder: it could be with the name or without. Often it is a little gift for the guest to tank them to partecipate of our dinner. It’s a cute idea make it by ourselves: little colored pine cones, tiny tree made of biscuits, little objects like snowman or tree in paper or cloth…
Even if our dinner is more informal, maybe a buffet, we must decorate the tables with the food and the other table for the guest, with an appropriate centerpiece, underplate and placeholders and any other decoration showed before.
….. to be continued…..
Wait for the second part of the To Do List tasks in few days!
Stay Tuned!
Trick in this post: 1. Organization is the key of the success for an awesome party! 2. To do List; 3. How to prepare a Christmas Party without stress