Invite friends for dinner regularly

I just realised that for the past three months I’ve had people over for dinner every single week. Sometimes only one person, other times I’ve had 11. I think that qualifies as a goal accomplished, it’s not very difficult- it’s just about taking the time to think about what to eat and then invite someone to participate.

I have a standing appointment for Tuesday nights with Jill and Benjamin now- basically, if I don’t tell them it’s not on, they will come over.

Kelly came last night too.

But I think I will keep this goal, and aim to invite some different people. And maybe my family…

Every week, before Bible Study, Benjamin has been coming over for dinner. We adopted him, so he is now a member of our family.

And more recently Jill has been joining in.
So, I’ve actually been achieving this goal!

is not dinner actually, i mean, every friday i invite people to my house! is like… what we do on fridays…
and… on thursday’s, we go and have a Pic Nic at the park! ^^

After a whole bunch of build up, we finally had our dinner party last night, and all in all it was a huge success. The food turned out great, we drank lots and lots of wine, and everyone got on really well.

We do have a massive amount of washing up to do today though, a lot of the stuff we borrowed, so that needs doing first – though then at least it is out of the way.

Looking back on what I might do differently, we needed to really be ready about half an hour sooner, as we had people turning up just as we were wrapping up the finishing touches and getting changed to our posh clothes. We could have done more cleaning though the week, it wasn’t unmanageable by any means, but we could have had an easier time on the day with just a bit more effort in advance.

But really, it all worked as planned – doing a trial run the other week got most of the glitches out of the way, so on the night there weren’t really any supprises.

My youngest brother, been the wise sort that he is pointed out that if we stop saying “Dinner Party” and rephrase it to “Having some people over for dinner” or some such, without the P word, then perhaps it might not upset people so much that they don’t get invites.

It’s worth a try.

Last night for Mothering Sunday we had the family over for a trial run of our dinner party menu under the guise of cooking for mothers day.

Everything went pretty well, and it served as a good basis for getting it right next week – in particular, our timings were out a bit, but that was due to the pressure cooker missing a part (So the soup took longer to do), which will be fixed for next week. And we did way to much pasta. Other then that, it’s looking good. With a few tweaks, it’ll be amazing. (Hopefully)

Of course, the main concern now is making sure everyone turns up. We have one person in peril because of a prior arrangment, and one couple who I’m still a little unsure about.

I’m probably just worrying over nothing though.

We’ve started to put together plans for our first “formal” dinner party at Chateau Fromage, but already the age old problem of who to invite is rearing it’s head. – With only having a set number of places (8 + 2 hosts) obviously you can’t issue an open invitation, so talking about it can be quiet akward when mixed with people who we have invited, and those we haven’t.

Hopefully people will realise the fact it’s nothing personal, and in time as we have more dinner parties things will balance, but with this been the first, then it means there is a clear in balance of people who have been invited, and those who haven’t.

our friends were supposed to come over last saturday, but my hubby had to work, and they wound up sick. we’ll try again this week.

We had a couple of friends over at Chateau Fromage last night, they moved in around the corner from us, so to make it easy for them while they are in the middle of all that we invited them around for some munch and a glass of wine.

Not a dinner party by any means, but just good to have people over during the week in a more casual social setting and just take a step out of the day to day routine for a while.