have people over for dinner more often

I sent out a note that invited family and friends over for a celebration on January 25th of next year. My motivation was to set a date, send it out, and decrease the opportunity to come up with excuses. In one month, we’ll be working on it even more. Our intent for 2008 – love as an action verb.

As the old dinning room has now been converted into my housemate’s DJ room, and the old dinning table is now upstairs covered in bookcrossing books!
www.bookcrossing.com

over tonight. It was not for dinner, but we served yummy snacks. I want to do more entertaining, but first I need to overcome my lack of confidence in this area.

I’ve taken steps: bought a slow-cooker and have been inviting people. But nothing has quite worked out yet. Still, I now have a list and that’s good.

Julie came over! YAY! All the way from Bakersfield and we played a rousing game of Pictionary.

Since then I’ve had houseguests that have stayed for a week and a half. They were over for dinner every night!

I’ve had a Cinco De Mayo party. I’ve had my sister over. I’ve done a seafood pasta dinner.

As I’ve said…Done done and DONE!

I’m not there yet, but I’m making progress. Last week I had some folks over, served a great salad, had coffee, and we made cards for a few hours. Most of the time was spent chatting and snacking – but it gave me a glimmer of hope about a future dinner party. I also contacted my sorority sisters to plan a reunion this Summer. I’m just moving forward to be intentional about spending time with folks. Any situation that reinforces that – I’ll consider it a win.

I realised tonight, while out for a meal with some old friends we haven’t seen for years, that what I really mean by this thing is ‘get together with friends more’ . That could be dinner, it could be a film, it could be a game of scrabble, it could be old friends or new.

that’s what I feel like often, so I need to be more pro-active about finding friends to invite to dinner. Had a new friend round a couple of weeks ago. Next action: talk to otherhalf about who we should invite round next.

will come tomorrow (1/24) and I have still not managed to plan a dinner party. I thought this was going to be the year. So…I’m going to have to go to plan B. Not like it has to be hoopla in order to have people over – but I do like to do things in a way that I like to do them. Hmmmm…..this speaks to the things we say are important but don’t seem to prioritize. I’m so guilty of that. Now, here is to IPOP – a year of intentional progress over perfection. I hope the next time I write its after the dinner party, not after missing the boat yet again.

I was surprised to find out on Christmas day that I had one more celebration. I was surprised again to find out last week that I was hosting. I still think this counts as having people over for dinner.

I woke up EARLY on Saturday and started cooking. I gave away tea breads for Christmas as one of the homemade gifts we gave. I was happy with the gingerbread and the chocolate chai cake wasn’t bad. I’m not sure how the strawberry bread was and I know the Earl Grey tea cake sucked. It’s a good thing that bread didn’t get handed out widely. As soon as I tasted it I pulled it from distribution. However I think, if I had to do it all over again, that I’d make the bread I made for Dee and Steve. It was a blueberry ginger muffin. Mmmm.

I continued to cook making two lasagnas, prepping the salad and garlic bread and baking two tarts for dessert. And we cleaned, wrapped gifts, set the table and were finished by the time they were supposed to get there. So I fell asleep on the couch for a bit waiting for them to arrive.

There are more pics here