A dinner party at your home refreshes friend and family relationships

If you haven’t hosted one in awhile, revisiting the basics is helpful.

So here’s a quick review:

Keep it simple.
Elaborate menus are exhausting to prepare, and you want to enjoy your own event. Funnily enough, elaborate menus can be exhausting for your guests too, even though they may be delicious. The reason is that your guests may need to be constantly praising your culinary skills instead of relaxing and enjoying the evening.

Let your guests be the stars of the evening
The comfort and ease of your guests is the most important ingredient of a successful evening around your table. It’s not how expensive the wine is, or how gourmet the food is. It’s how comfortable you make them feel that counts.

Keep the flowers in your table centerpiece low enough so that people can see each other across the table.

Organize and plan ahead.
We’re not talking military campaigns here. All I’m suggesting is that you plan ahead and decide what tasks you can do a week before, a few days before and the day before. Ideally you want to end up with a minimum of last minute tasks. You want to be fresh and ready to enjoy your delicious food along with your guests..

That way you don’t have to do a million things just before the guests arrive. You eliminate the stress of leaving guests alone in the living room or at the dining table by themselves too much of the time. You eliminate this stress because you don't have to run back and forth to the kitchen.

Make a list
About two or three weeks before

• invite your guests
• choose your table settings
• plan your menu and list the ingredients
• buy anything you can at this point

• Clean the house now so you only have last minute touchups left
• Decide on what you will wear, make sure it is wearable!
• Prepare any of the dishes you can make ahead