Top Five Steps to Getting Your Home Ready to Party

Less can be more, and generosity in hospitality at home can still be conveyed at times like these.  No matter how you like to entertain, it’s important to make sure that the home is ready to invite your guests in over the festive season.

Some of us will throw boozy all-night parties and others will host sophisticated dinners. I quite like the idea of having friends over for supper. It has that less formal, less planned feel and almost automatically conjures up the vibe that those invited will play their part in the preparations upon their arrival. I like to entertain loosely, but there are a few things I’ll always take into consideration when getting the home ready to party.

Pre-Party Spring Clean

Give your home a good freshen-up ahead of the party season, which should be more than spending 10 minutes before your guests arrive fluffing the cushions! Check all of your glassware is polished and that you’ve got enough cutlery and crockery. Organise the fridge and lose anything that’s not been used in the last 12 months. Freshen up the bathroom, you could splash out on some good quality cotton hand towels, plus a luxury hand soap and moisturiser. Tidy away everyday clutter to give the home a lift and create a space you’re proud to invite others into.You can easily liven up a room that looks tired with large bowls of fresh seasonal fruits – keep it simple, selecting just one colourful fruit and buy enough to fill a large vessel.

Make some extra space

You may need to move some furniture around or even take it out of the main entertaining area when entertaining at home. Reposition the items that are taking up too much space or pop them into a spare room that’s unlikely to be used by your guests. Try to keep the party in one area of the home, this will help to avoid the guests becoming dispersed and give your party more of an opportunity to gather traction – a busy, buzzy room is a much more desirable place to be!

Lighting

It’s sometimes neglected, but is such an important part of creating the right atmosphere for a party. We all know when the lights dim in any room something fun is about to happen - this doesn’t just apply to the night out at the theatre. Lose any bright ceiling lighting and buy in a truckload of good church candles and scatter around your property. I also think we all find something mesmerising about a naked flame and if you have the luxury of an open fire, get it lit and have plenty of logs to keep it going for the entire night.

Planning an appropriate menu

If I am hosting a dinner party or preparing a menu for a client, I generally go easy on the canapés. Meals are often spoilt by showing too many of your cards too early, or by filling people up too soon so their capacity for enjoying a meal is somewhat diminished.

Planning a menu for home is more than throwing together a collection of recipes from your cookbook shelf. It needs to be balanced and flow from one dish seamlessly to the next. Too much cream, too much butter, a clash of flavours or muddled origins of ingredients, ultimately will leave the diner feeling less satisfied than one who’s been served a simple, delicious and carefully crafted menu. With all this in mind and although the actual food is important - a great host is someone who gets the ratios of ambience, meal and service right, not someone who arrives at the table with the soufflé and beaded brow.

Whatever you decide upon, make sure you’ve got your kitchen organised and you’ve thought through how you intend to serve each course, where you’ll clear the dirty dishes to, where the empty bottles will go, and how you’ll limit the time you’re away from the table.

Plan for a few spills

I’ve been to many parties where a glass of red wine goes over and the guests hurry around throwing various solutions at the spillage; white wine, soda water or even milk – someone once told me that milk draws the colour out of fabric, but I’m not sure they were thinking about how it’ll smell in a couple of weeks time! Be prepared and have a cloth/paper towel, a dustpan and some stain removing spray to hand. If you’re planning a really lively occasion, it might even be worth lining up some hired help to arrive the following morning, so you don’t have to worry when you might not be feeling at your strongest!

Paul Squire, Owner of London-based boutique caterers Cook and Waiter:

Cook and Waiter
020 8758 9165
cookandwaiter.com