.Home Sweet Living

picture courtesy of skinnygirlsandmayo.com

Do any of you think our generation is a lacking in the glamour department?  Don't you remember being little and your parents getting all dressed up to go to dinner or a friends dinner party?  They entertained more, got dressed up more (even to go on airplanes).  I distinctly remember the shift in airplane attire.  My first plane trip to Fla my sister in I we're dressed in little sailor dresses and my Dad in a suit.  A few years later I was given a hot pink track suit for a plane ride to California (the kind that was fake wrinkled and made noises when I walked).  There's no glamour in anything!  Not only have people stopped dressing up (even for the very important upcoming holiday), but a dinner party now a days involves a six pack, pizza and a bowl of chips!  

I know entertaining can be time consuming and expensive but it's also a great way to show your friends how much you care!  I have noticed a shift that I'm not sure everyone has caught on to and will make entertaining a little less daunting!  People don't want to eat as much!  Forget a huge dinner, everyone is happy with dips, appetizers and simple fruit and biscotti or fudge for desert.  Just don't skimp on the bar.    

We have a group of friends (there's six or eight of us) and we would try to go out to dinner about 3 times a year.  We always say we need to do it more often but we're sick of spending money on expensive dinners.  I came up with a smaller version of a dinner club friends of ours once told us about.  The larger version goes like this:  There are 12 couples, each host a dinner party one time a year so you're getting together once a month.  You spend as much on your one dinner party as you do going out to dinner 12 times.  These parties were extravagant, sometimes including a band or whatever else the host and hostess dreamed up.  The idea was instead of going to boring, generic restaurants 12 times a year, you were invited to a beautiful, swanky dinner party once a month.  They could be different themes, foods, music the sky's the limit!

My version is every three to four months one of us hosts a dinner party at our house without our kids.  We just had our Christmas one and granted we weren't in ball gowns and tuxedos but we all stepped it up a bit and had a wonderful time drinking cosmos out of really tall, fun champagne glasses.  It's our turn next and we'll be hosting a Valentine's soiree with lots of deserts and maybe the Newlywed Game!