Why I don't host dinner parties...

We had some friends over for dinner last night...
Sounds lovely, sounds sociable and it sounds easy right?
Lovely: Yes;
Sociable: Yes;
Easy: err NO!

List of things that need doing when hosting a dinner:
1. Clean and Tidy house
2. Buy food
3. Prepare and cook food
4. Set the table
5. Dress appropriately

All this takes time for anyone, whether you have kids or not, and the effort level correlates to the closeness of the friendship. These were new friends so the effort was high to impress!

However when you have 2 highly active, attention-seeking toddlers this list becomes more of a challenge. Here is how to attack it:

1. Clean and Tidy House: There is no point doing this until an hour or so before the dinner, as a toddler is highly skilled in undoing all your hard work in the space of 3 minutes, sometimes less. My advice: only do the specific areas where your guests will visit, i.e. upstairs was a no-go zone, some things that normally hang around the dining table were moved to the garage or the playroom and the rest was genuinely tidied away!


2. Buy Food: This is the easy part and can be done in advance. I had decided on my menu on Friday and did the shopping on Saturday morning with Laila in tow.

3. Prepare and cook food: This is where you need to be clever. Carefully plan your menu. Choose something not too complicated that can be made in advance and kept warm in the oven. I made spanish chicken and rice after lunch and just reheated it in the oven when our guests arrived. They brought a salad and I had bought some nice bread at the boulangerie. For dessert Laila had helped me make an apple crumble that I just had to stick in the oven before we sat down to eat, easy peasy!

4. Set the table: This is something else that has to be done last minute as the kids use the table a lot for their activities, and I'm not risking the Denby being broken! Luckily I dug out the nice tablecloth earlier in the day, it was clean but in desperate need of ironing, that took me over half an hour! I do have an "easy clean no iron" tablecloth but it's at the bottom of the washing basket, must wash it so it's ready for next time! This is also the point where you realise you don't have enough matching wine glasses or can't put your finger on the cheeseboard, but we made it work!

5. Dress appropriately: After a day of cooking, cleaning, tidying, colouring, sticking, baking etc I definitely needed to change my outfit! I think I managed it 2 mins before the doorbell rang, just after I cleverly smashed an empty beer bottle on the floor and wiped up the baked beans from the kids tea! Honestly if our guests had turned up just 5 minutes earlier, they would not have been greeted with 2 relaxed smiles!!

All in all it was a success, but it took a whole day to prepare. The kids were a nightmare because we were busy trying to do something that was not about them, how dare we?! So that made it all the more difficult.

So no offence but we'll probably be retreating back into our unsociable hole for a while, it's just easier and less stressful that way...

So why on earth have I offered to host Christmas this year???!!!!