Creating the Party Project Plan

AKA “We’re Having a Party, Part 2″

When we last left our heroine (me), she was perusing the internet for interesting party appetizers. This one was too hot, this one was too cold, this one is just right – copy & paste into a document for printing! This one is too hard, this one is too soft, this one is just right – copy & paste into a document for printing! This one is too much, this one is too little, this one is just right – copy & paste into a document for printing! After a few days there were several choices for food AND drink. I wanted a special holiday punch! I’d had a lot of fun making a special holiday punch for Thanksgiving and I wanted a new special punch for this party.

We had dinner with my sister and brother-in-law and the 4 of us voted on the options. All of those new dishes seemed very reasonable to make. Nothing seemed to require too much crazy preparation. Time proved me wrong on that but as a work plan, it all looked good. I am very inaccurate when it comes to gauging how much food is enough. I always have WAY more than I need. I know this in advance and I honestly DO attempt to limit what I serve, but somehow I’m always adding ‘just one more thing’ here and ‘another one’ there. On the other hand, I’ve never had anyone complain there was nothing to eat and no one has ever gone hungry and many people get leftovers to take with them (that’s if you stay til the end when I’m doing clean-up 🙂 )

The party was on a Tuesday. New Year’s Eve was Monday night. I was working the prior Thursday and Friday. I had 3 days to shop, clean and prepare food. I’m very lucky in that my husband helps a lot – both with the cleaning and the food. I tend to do all the grocery shopping. For a party like this, the shopping would have to be done over several days, because some things could not be bought too far in advance. This party I had 2 extra pairs of hands to help – my sister and her husband were committed to helping. *smile* I’m very very fortunate. I’m not sure WHY they decided they were going to serve as my kitchen staff but I’m sooooo grateful that they did. There are several days missing from this recounting but I’ll tell you that I did move the turkey from the freezer to the refrigerator on the Tuesday before the party, giving it several days to defrost properly and in time for marinating before roasting.

I sat down Friday night and wrote out my schedule. Saturday had one commitment that was time-specific – getting my hair cut. *grin* I also planned to pick up the liquor and start on moving furniture and “stuff” off the first floor to elsewhere in the house. My brother-in-law (b-i-l)has a membership at Restaurant Depot, because he does LOADS of cooking for our temple congregation. He offered to take me there so I could buy in bulk. I was looking for food, drinks AND some more paper goods and serving utensils. Never mind that I’d already spent a small fortune at the party store, just a feeeeeeew mooooore things, you know???? 🙂

Have you ever been to the warehouse stores where restaurants and caterers buy? What an experience. I forgot to take pictures of my cart (I didn’t buy anywhere near as much as I thought I would there) but I did try to get some shots of the shelves for anyone who has never seen a food depot. I love that place. 🙂 Saturday, therefore, was Restaurant Depot in the morning, then my hair, then the liquor then the party store (again) and then home to begin moving things and prepping on food. I have no idea what happened to the Saturday page of my battle plan. But once I have my lists in my notebook, I’m ready to rock-n-roll!