Hostess with the Mostess

Yesterday we hosted our first social gathering since Audrey was born. It went fabulously and made me realize how far we have come as parents/adults and hosts.

When Don and I first started hosting things a few years back we would fight every time. I am big on being hostess and he is well… not. He would forget to offer people drinks, put out food etc. It wasn’t that he did it on purpose it just didn’t occur to him that someone who didn’t come over very often wouldn’t feel comfortable rummaging around in our cupboards looking for a cup. I on the other hand would circulate all the time making sure everyone had everything they needed, that everyone was engaged in conversation and making sure that things were being picked up so there was enough room for people to put their cup down etc. Looking back I probably wasn’t making anyone feel welcome and/or relaxed which had been my goal. Don and I have learned to meet in the middle when it comes to hosting, I have stopped being so crazy (yeah I admit it) and he has started taking over some of the responsibilities. We also put our foot down and only invite people we like, for example no more obligatory invites to ALL of Don’s co-workers. They people we like don’t care if we aren’t perfect hosts, and there is much less stress on us to please everyone. Now at the end of a cookout we sit and talk about how great our friends are instead of what we could have/ should have done.

On top of our drastically different styles of hosting we also tried to offer too much food, we wanted to make sure that everyone had exactly what they wanted and in doing so ended up with lots of leftover food and we ended up cooking/ serving almost the whole party. We have now simplified, this time we offered only hamburgers and hotdogs… and you know what happened? Everyone ate, and no one complained. We also got sides from the store, I didn’t make anything… I figured my time was better spent cleaning the house before people got there. Finally invited people to bring something if they wanted to and we discovered people bring really great things: cupcakes, brownies, pie, deviled eggs etc. So now instead of cooking the whole time, we get to enjoy our friends, and really people aren’t coming over here for the food they are coming over to see us!

A lot of years and two kids later we have learned a lot, not just about hosting but about how to be happy in situations that could be stressful. It’s about the people and the experience not the small details. You would think that with two small children it would be more stressful but we have managed to enjoy ourselves more. I’m glad we are able to show our kids how much fun you can have when surrounded by good friends.