Tips for Holiday Entertaining – Don’t Invite Squirrels!

Somehow over the years I have become worse and worse about hosting people for anything more than a cup of coffee, and maybe a bowl of chips if I’m in the mood for sharing, and Maggie hasn’t found them first. If they are a favourite flavour of hers though I feel like I am just endangering the guest’s life by putting the chips out. It becomes a bit like putting out a bowl of raw meat when there is a puma in the house, and then offering it to Whiskers, your tiny house cat. Give the crudités platter to the cat and she won’t leave with claw marks.

With Christmas being right at the beginning of the school break this year, I feel like the holidays would be a great time to catch up with some of the people I have neglected over the years. Since I haven’t hosted a dinner in a long time, I am concerned. But it should be like riding a bike right? Except that doesn’t bode well, since I forgot how to do that too. I have three scars, and likely a few YouTube videos to prove it, which is humiliating since it seems to be widely understood that it’s a skill that doesn’t go away…ever, and is held up as the gold standard of mastery. Also, it is clearly concerning that the visual that first pops into my head when I think “party planning” is a puma, a house cat, and a bowl of raw meat.

Make the guests serve themselves in the kitchen while you “check” the wine. Thoroughly. Put the giant bottle at your seat to keep a careful eye on it for quality. The party will go very smoothly.

I need some advice. And probably some help convincing my long-neglected friends and family that the invitations are not traps. I could include a notarized oath in the invitations that I am not holding them captive in my home for a timeshare presentation, nor to make each of them take one of the children because I just can’t take it anymore, nor will they be forced into manual labour, not like those other times. But I also feel like including a legal document in a dinner invitation just draws more suspicion to the occasion. I wonder if Eventbrite has some guidelines around that in their FAQ section?

My tablecloth is vinyl and the napkins are paper, but check out the wedding china and crystal, and my impromptu centrepiece made of ornaments! I’m hoping this is like how you can mix styles of furniture and call it eclectic.

Once I trick them into agreeing to come over, I am free to begin planning the evening. After breathing into a paper bag and spending several hours plotting how to get out of it.

I was checking out hosting tips over on Metro Richelieu and a lot of them involve making sure to plan…make lists, plan all the dishes ahead of time, write out all the ingredients you will need. Organization, delegating, and decorating seem to be important too.

Well this explains why my parties are disastrous! It’s an executive functioning nightmare, with a side of perfectionist paralysis. I really couldn’t figure out why having people over always seems to be so much harder for me than for other people. But now that I finally know that I have ADHD, I see that planning and organization are even more important for me, in order to pull off an event. If regular people have to do that much active planning to host a dinner party, then of course it’s not going to just happen seamlessly for me.

While I am normally a terrible cook, I have to say I make a heck of a turkey dinner!

So tip number one for me is to make sure I take my ADHD meds. Because as much as I don’t want pumas at my party, I want squirrels there even less!

This three-sectioned warming tray is a life-saver for me because it keeps the food hot while I get the rest of it ready and I don’t have to stress as much about timing. I use the flat warming tray at the back for gravy and dishes from the oven.

Happy Holidays!