Savvy Entertaining

If you are lucky enough to live somewhere you and your family can enjoy some sledding fun, I’m so glad!

Think about inviting all the rosy-cheeked sledders home for a fun after-sledding party. It doesn’t have to be a lot of work and, if you plan ahead, you can waltz into the house with your guests and have something warm and delicious on the table in a matter of minutes.

Make ahead a tray or two of easy appetizers. It could be something as simple as a veggie tray with dip or pinwheels made by rolling up thinly sliced ham with cream cheese and chopped olives in a flour tortilla. These work especially well to make the night before. Roll up tortilla rolls in plastic wrap then when you are ready to serve, remove plastic and cut into bite-sized wheels.

Put chili in the crock pot earlier in the day and plan for it to be done when you come in from sledding. This is filling and warm and an easy way to feed the troops. Serve a loaf of french bread or tortilla chips along with the chili. You can have shredded cheese, sour cream, and onions set aside for those who’d like to garnish their bowls of steaming chili-goodness.

For beverages, have both hot and cold drinks available. You can preset a hot chocolate station before you head outdoors. When you come back in, just mix up the chocolate and serve. Other hot drinks might include spiced cider or coffee or a pot of hot tea. Cold beverages could include soda pop, juice or punch.

The recipe for this Pomegranate Punch is easy and so tasty!

For dessert, have a plate of left-over Christmas cookies that you’ve hidden from grubby, greedy hands in the freezer, or whip up a  batch of Cinnamon Rolls. You can make the cinnamon rolls that morning, or the day before, and quickly reheat right before serving. That is one way your guest will melt in a puddle and be at your mercy for the rest of the year.

The most important thing is to have fun!

Some of my favorite winter memories are of sledding parties we hosted at our home. We lived on a hill which meant a great sledding run waiting just outside the back door. If you survived the trip down the hill, it was a short walk to our pond where you could skate if the ice was solidly frozen. We also had snowmobiles back then that provided a never-ending source of winter entertainment and post-sledding transportation.

This photo, circa early 1980s (yes, laugh all you want), shows us gathered around enjoying a day of sledding and snowmobiling fun.

My Dad and brother would wait until the sledders zoomed to the bottom of the hill and would drag us all back up behind the snowmobiles  to do it again. Since we didn’t have to hike back up the hill, wasting precious energy, we were able to sled twice as long.

The only damper on the fun was a big ditch at the bottom of the hill. If you didn’t bail off in time, you could end up sitting in the ditch covered in icy cold mud, counting your teeth and feeling to make sure no bones were broken. That was a great incentive to never be the person on the bottom of the pile stacked on a big tractor inner tube. When bodies started falling off or bailing, there was most usually not enough time for the one stuck on the bottom to avoid careening into the ditch.

I absolutely loved the days when large groups of the family would converge and we’d sled until we could barely stand up straight. There was even a year we had so much fun, two of my cousins broke our toboggan in half. I think it had bounced across the sledding trail one too many times. Then there was the year, I stayed out so long playing in the snow I soaked through not one but two snowsuits. My mother was convinced I’d die of pneumonia, but I don’t think I really cared. Fun was waiting outside the door, calling my name!

What awesome times we had.

Pull on your boots, dig out your scarf and mittens, go sled and have some fun!

Happy Sledding!

The once avid sledder

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