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Archive for the ‘Entertaining Ideas’ Category

Memorial Day Entertaining Tips

Posted in Entertaining at Home, Entertaining Ideas, Holidays, Party Theme, tagged , , on May 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here we are headed into Memorial Day weekend – the official kick-off of the summer entertaining season. Dust off those barbecues, clean off the patios and invite over some friends.

Keep your weekend entertaining simple but fun. Let the holiday guide you as a theme in choosing patriotic colors and decorations.

Proudly fly your flag and incorporate miniature flags into your decorations.

Use a white or blue tablecloth (inexpensive sheets work well) and top with red, white and blue accents such as streamers, ribbons and pots filled with red and white geraniums.

Use white dishes or serving pieces. They don’t have to match. If you have red and blue pieces, mix those in with the white.

Make large star-shaped sugar cookies or a star-shaped cake, frost then top with sliced strawberries on each arm of the star and a cluster of blueberries right in the center.

Put votives in old glass canning jars and tie rims with a red or blue ribbon. If you want to play it safe, use battery-operated candles.

Purchase red poppies from the American Legion for everyone to wear or give them to guests as they are leaving the party.

Stock up on ice and have plenty of beverages on hand. Use a big bucket or container to keep beverages cold.  Just fill with ice and nestle in individual cans and bottles. Another fun alternative is to fill a wagon with ice and set your cold foods or beverages inside.

Make sure you have garbage cans that are clean, empty and placed in areas handy for guests to find. Line with garbage bags as this will make your clean up go much faster.

Follow this link for 10 great condiment tips.

Be safe, be smart and have a great Memorial Weekend Celebration!

Happy Entertaining!

Shanna

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It is NOT Chocolate

Posted in entertain, Musings, tagged , on May 20, 2010| 11 Comments »

When I was 11, my mother decided to bring my world crashing down around my ears and declared I had an allergy to chocolate. Since I was plagued by a variety of food allergies I didn’t question the decision. I wasn’t able to in my traumatized state.

The problem was that I was genetically programmed to crave chocolate. Several members of my dad’s side of the family have the same affliction. We crave chocolate. We love chocolate. We are chocolate addicts. We need chocolate. Chocolate is a key ingredient in our happy existence. This goes beyond the normal really liking chocolate. I mean we honest-to-goodness need chocolate.

So with much crying and whining, I spent the next 12 years without chocolate. Trying to make it up to me, my mother attempted multiple times to convince me that carob was just as good, if not even better than chocolate. She was so wrong.

A great definition I found of carob is this:

“Carob is a tropical pod that contains a sweet, edible pulp and inedible seeds. After drying, the pulp is roasted and ground into a powder that resembles cocoa powder, but does not have the same flavor and texture of chocolate.”

Okay, so you read that part about it not having the same flavor or texture of chocolate. That is putting it mildly! Carob, in my opinion, has a similar flavor and texture to that of cardboard being finely shredded  and then dusted with a generic brand of cocoa powder.  It is NOT a substitute for chocolate.

My mother got creative with her attempts at helping me find peace with carob. There were carob-chip cookies (blech!), carob-covered peanuts (double blech!), and carob cake (I won’t even try to describe that one). She finally gave up. I was forever grateful and accepted my chocolate-less existence.

Then I met and married Most Wonderful Hubby. One day he casually asked why I was allergic to chocolate. I didn’t know. My mother said it was so, and so it was. He gave me half of his chocolate candy bar and I ate it. Then we both waited for me to break out in hives, collapse in a heap and in general do something that required a trip to the emergency room. When nothing happened, I think I heard a chorus singing hallelujah.

Suddenly the world was a happy place again, one filled with chocolate. Do you know how many new kinds of chocolate things are developed in a 12-year period? A lot! And I’m pretty sure I tasted every single one of them. I’m still on a quest to make sure no chocolate is left untasted. After all, I’ve got the rest of my life to make up for those 12 lost years.

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Cooking School Fun

Posted in entertain, Entertaining at Home, Referrals, tagged , on May 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Last week I had the opportunity to have a booth at a Taste of Home Cooking School. Because these events are so much fun and offer attendees a wealth of information as well as a great evening, they are the focus of my Wednesday Shout-Out.

Attendees get to come early, sample great food, receive discount coupons, interact with vendors and then enjoy a couple of hours of exciting recipes and on-stage cooking demonstrations. Did I mention the prizes? There are a lot of great prizes that are given away throughout the evening as well.

If you have the opportunity to attend a Taste of Home Cooking School, I highly recommend it. If nothing else, you’ll come home with some great new recipes to try!


Here is my booth in all it’s lime green and hot pink glory.

The cooking school crowd, enthralled with the presentation.

To find out more about Taste of Home Cooking Schools in your area, click here.

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Limes and Flowers Make Centerpiece Magic

Posted in Centerpieces, Entertaining at Home, Entertaining Ideas, Quick and Easy, tagged , , , , on May 18, 2010| 3 Comments »

If you are looking for a centerpiece that brings a “Wow” factor to your table, think about combining unusual elements together.

One combination that I love is a vase filled with sliced limes topped with a bouquet of flowers. Not only is it a striking visual element on your table the smell of the limes mixing with the florals creates an appealing scent.

This centerpiece doesn’t take that long to put together, but really makes a statement.

To create it you will need:

6-8 limes (depending on size)

a hurricane vase

a plain glass  florist vase

6-8 stems of a “drapey” flower

6-8 stems of a “stalk” flower

10-12 stems of a “blooming” flower

To assemble, start by slicing your limes. I make the slices pretty thin.

When you are finished with that, put the plain florist vase inside the hurricane. It is okay if the florist vase sticks up a bit because the top will be hidden anyway.

Once the vase is in place, start layering in the limes until you’ve got them going up to the top of the hurricane. Fill both the hurricane and the plain vase with water.

Start arranging the flower stems inside the plain vase. I use the “drapey” flowers around the outside edge of the vase in particular,to hide the edges. The “stalk flowers” create some texture and height appeal while the “blooming” flowers add bright pops of color and texture.For this arrangement I used cuttings from a snowball bush that had not yet bloomed for my “drapey” flowers, lavender stems for my “stalk” flowers and peonies for the “blooming” flowers.

Have fun with this, be creative and remember there aren’t any rules set in stone about how this has to look. You could also substitute lemon or orange slices and you could use any combination of flowers and greenery. If you want dramatic height, you could even throw in a few tree branches.

Happy Entertaining!

Shanna

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