entertain friends more at home

FYI: I did complete my personal challenge. I just forgot to mark it completed before the deadline. Even though it reads “failed”, I consider it as ACCOMPLISHED. :)

Had friends over for ribs and margarita’s. A very nice relaxing fun evening. I set the patio table with bright summer colored placemats and yellow clothed napkins. The margarita picture complimented the table setting, along with the margarita glasses matching the placemat colors. The table really was cheerful and fun. I bought the tableware a couple years ago but never used it. But this summer, it’s going to be used often :)

My flowers in the terracotta containers went perfect with my table. The flowers are getting beautiful and full! A new passion of mine. A 43T goal that I achieved. :)

A couple more nights of entertaining friends and I’ll have achieved this goal too!

I DID IT!!!!! Entertained family and friends. Tonight was wonderful! I did it, I had a graduation cook-out for my son, Matthew. It was small, intimate and casual.

My mother is visiting from Michigan and is a wonderful cook. She prepared the food. Baked beans, German potato salad, unbelievable fruit salad and Caesar salad served with beer brats. And I, was the decorater.

Our guests seemed to enjoy the evening filled with great food, fine wine, fun and interesting conversations, a summer night breeze and a happy grad!

I actually was excited about entertaining, not anxious or stressed (not according to my daughter). I had it all planned out, accomplished my lists and ended up with a beautiful gathering. My friends were full of compliments through-out the evening.

My patio area looked beautiful with my potted flowers (another completed goal here on 43T) and my husband was truly in awe of me the whole night.

I’m going to entertain a few more times before I mark this goal completed.

It’s time… Matthew’s graduation get together (small party) is Friday night. It’s going to be quite small, Matthew asked that we not have a party for him but agreed to have a cook-out with family and a few colleagues of my husband’s who are close to Matthew.

My family is flying in from Michigan and staying here at my home. I’m fine with this, not having any anxiety over that. Usually, I’m a nervous wreck about having guests over to the home, but this time I believe I’m calm, cool and collect.

I’m very organized (first time I can ever remember) menu planned, cake ordered, decorations and paper supplies purchased (before, I would have waited until the day before to purchase and panic when they would be sold out of the colors I needed), patio flowers look beautiful.

Everything is coming together, why then, are my shingles starting to appear on my left arm. They only become active when I’m under a great deal of stress. I’m not feeling stressed or anxious, or am I?

I’m just happy that I’m organized, excited about entertaining for the first time in years and feel confident that it’s going to be a nice evening for Matthew, our family and guests.

Maybe I am a little stressed. My husband’s colleagues have no idea that we’re separated. My family is not real happy at the moment with my husband and my kids may be put in a difficult situation. Hmmmm

HD just asked if we could invite a couple over for dinner next week whom will be visiting the area from Hawaii.

This is a sticky situation…First, being separated it may be uncomfortable for our guests. Second, HD and I are working on restoring our marriage and one of many issues that hurt our marriage was that I wasn’t comfortable in entertaining.

My HD is very social and have always wanted to entertain friends in our home. (It’s not my home, I’m blessed with a very nice home. Not sure why I’m uncomfortable and don’t enjoy it).

I said “sure” and now I’m nervous as all heck! I’m starting to get those insecure thoughts in my head, what if, what if and what if they…

This is going to be interesting.

My husband would often ask if we could invite friends over for a cook-out, dinner or just to chat…I would go into several reasons why that date is not good or that I was not comfortable at that time with the idea.

Now that we’re separated and we’re having our “wine-chats”, I have learned that it was important to him to invite friends over to our home and he was frustrated with my resenting his asking. He shared that he works hard to support our family and to provide us with a nice home. He’s absolutely right, he does. Our home is very nice and I keep it cleaned and picked-up but for some reason I always fear having people over.

We have a really nice backyard and pool area that is great for entertaining. I must get over this petty fear and appreciate my husband’s ability and desire to provide us with our home, and him wanting to entertain our friends. This is very important to him. Nothing fancy, he’s not the fancy type of guy, really down to earth.

I will talk with him about inviting a few of his friends over for a Friday night happy hour and cook~out. This hopefully will be scheduled for the month of May. I’m sure he (we) will enjoy this and that I will become comfortable in having people over.