You’ll want to give guests plenty of notice since there are so many parties during this time period. Send the invitations early. Communicate clearly if you are having a gift exchange. Set dollar limits if needed. Make this optional for guests and consider a theme, such as gag-gifts. Your invitations should state the starting and ending time of your party and should mention the food you will be serving, whether it is light holiday fare or a traditional sit-down dinner. And don’t forget to include directions!

Planning the menu can seem like a daunting task, but with plenty of preparation, you can prepare a feast easily and quickly. Before you plan the menu, plan your budget, and stick to it. Choose a menu for which many of the items can be made ahead of time. Keep the appetizers simple. Skip the holiday hors d’oeuvres and set out meat, cheese and vegetable trays from the supermarket. Provide olives, pickles, crackers and dip. Opt for heavy finger foods instead of recipes that require dinnerware. Traditional Christmas goodies include: gingerbread cookies, eggnog, and roasted chesnuts. Anticipate the comfort of your guests. Set appetizers in the living room, on the buffet, and in other places that make it easy to nibble.

Consider having your Christmas party catered. Call your favorite restaurant or catering company with a list of food you will need for your party. The expense may be well worth the extra time and relief it provides.

Decorations are easy: Most likely you will already have a Christmas tree, Christmas lights, and stocking hung on the mantle. Set the mood by lighting a fire in the fireplace. You might also want to decorate your tree with miniature stockings that have your guests’ names written on them. Just stuff the stockings with candy that you can buy in bulk, and give them to your guests as party favors. Send yours home with a little something extra: a small ornament, a bag of cookies, even a candy cane with a bow is a sweet way to say happy holidays.

Plan a few activities to keep the party lively. Consider going caroling, baking cookies (for kid’s parties), and of course some traditional party games. Making the gift exchange into a game is also fun. Also make sure you have some great Christmas Party music. A lot of Christmas compilation CD’s are slower tunes, so look specifically for more upbeat party songs.

Of course everyone loves a visit from Santa at a Christmas party. Before you decide, keep in mind that small children may not be comfortable with a Santa. If you are hiring a Santa Claus to come to your party, make sure he has references or is booked through a reputable company. Ask how much experience he has. Will he pass out gifts that you provide? Candy canes? Read The Night Before Christmas or other story? Sing jingle bells? You may also consider hiring a family member or friend to dress up in a rented Santa costume.

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Christmas Party Planning Tips and Ideas

Send out Invitations: Get your party invitations out 1-2 weeks before the party. To avoid any confusion, clearly state instructions about themes, costumes, and when the party ends. Decide if you want to encourage costumes or discourage costumes and clearly communicate this on the invitation.

Have Adult Supervision: For minors, adult supervision is necessary for safety reasons as well as preventing any property damage. Adults can help with the party and enforce rules, while the guests have fun. Most parents want to know that their children will be safe on Halloween, and will only allow a child to attend a supervised party. Consider asking some of the guest’s parents to help supervise.

Have a Camera Handy: Take pictures and arrange them in a photo album to show your guests after the party. Better yet, Buy a huge photo album and add pictures every year, after your annual Halloween Party. It’s hilarious to watch how the costumes evolve over the years. Another idea is to have someone take Polaroid pictures of each guest as they arrive. Give everyone their pic as they leave your party in remembrance of the occasion.

Have a Backup Plan: If you’re planning your party outdoors, be prepared for inclement weather. Have other arrangements ready at a moments notice.

Get Help in Decorating: Allow some guests to arrive early and help with the Halloween decorations. This will ease your workload and add some creative minds. Kids love to decorate for Halloween, so utilize their energy!

Supply Food and Candy: What’s a party without goodies? Try dressing up your food to look like gross things such as eyeballs, body parts, etc. Make the punch look like blood. Find recipes on the web for spooky Halloween treats.

Hand out Party Favors: Don’t let the kids leave empty handed. Hand out gifts to game contest winners and make up some party favor bags with Halloween candy.

Activities: Consider bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins, or telling spooky stories.

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Halloween Party Planning Tips & Ideas

Your invitation should match the style of your event. Is it formal, semi-formal or a casual backyard get together. Your invitation provides the details of the celebration as well as what to expect at the party.

Traditionally, it is advised to send out invitations eight weeks before your event. We can hear you screaming “Eight weeks!” We’ve found while this is a good idea with formal events and weddings, it is just not possible with most every-day events. Our customers tell us that they didn’t even think about having a party until 2-6 weeks before their event. Obviously, the sooner you can notify your guests, the better, but don’t let this stress you out or prevent you from getting killer invitations at the last minute.

If you know you’re having a party for an event that is several months away, consider sending a Save the Date card. This is simply a notice to your guest list that you are planning an event for that date and to mark their calendars so they’ll be ready when the details follow by invitation closer to the party date when the details have been finalized. Save the Date cards are almost a necessity for events taking place on holiday weekends, events that will require out of state travel for guests or a wedding to ensure vacations are not scheduled for the same time.

For those special events, such as weddings and when guests must travel, do extend invitations about 60 days in advance. Extend invitations to formal events at least 30 days in advance. For informal get-togethers less notice is acceptable, about two to three weeks should suffice, although more notice is practical, especially if the party is planned during the busy holiday season.

If you want others to bring their own drinks to the dinner party, you can put “BYOB” on the invitation. This stands for “bring your own bottle” and guests can bring a favorite drink of their choice to share. If you are planning a potluck, you can also put this on the invite. It is advisable to assign specific dishes for people to bring, so that you don’t end up with a lot of side casseroles and no main courses or vice-versa.

Information you should always include:
Name of the host(s)/hostess(es) or parent(s) giving the party
The purpose of the invitation: A birthday party, a wedding, a holiday open house.
Name of honoree (the birthday person, the mother-to-be, the bride and groom)
Day and Date of the party (Saturday, August 29th or if it is formal, Saturday, the twenty-nineth of August).
If a formal event, include the year and spell it out (two thousand and four)
Time (6:00 p.m., or for formal events, spell out the time such as six o’clock in the evening)
Name of Place (Italian Restaurant)
Location of Place (street address, city and state if inviting out of town guests, but no zip code)
Appropriate attire if it is an issue with your party

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Party Invitation Tips & Etiquette

Here’s another one of the baby shower ideas that I worked on for Parents.com, which went live on their site earlier this week. This one is a hip “Little Birdie” soiree inspired by the idea of nesting and getting mom ready for her new little chick (or chicks!). Click here for full details.

P.S. The whimsical, bird-cage-like lanterns pictured above are from Anthropologie. Although they’d make for some seriously fabulous centerpieces, they’re probably a little pricey to use as centerpieces on multiple tables, but would still make for a wonderful focal point somewhere in the shower that would also double as a keepsake gift for mom.

For a more affordable take on this centerpiece idea, try painting wooden craft birdhouses (available at most craft stores) a solid color and papering the roof or sides with contemporary scrapbook paper. Another option is to look for less expensive ready-made options, like these cool Bird@Home houses from Amazon.com ($25 each).

Also pictured in top collage: Egg Bird House by J Schatz. Multiple colors availabe - $135 each at jschatz.com)

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Baby Shower Idea: Little Birdie Soirée

Here’s a little sneak peek at the new “HWTM Collection” of modern digital scrapbooking templates that’s coming very soon to HowFastTheyGrow.com. Our first official HWTM-branded product…yay!

There are 81 different template designs in the collection that fall into 3 different categories - Mod Squad (Boy), Metro Sorbet (Girl), and Mostess Days (holidays & everyday celebrations).  The examples pictured above and below are all from Mostess Days…hope you like them! More info come soon…

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Sneak Peek: New HWTM Collection at How Fast They Grow

Today over at GlamDish: check out some fall-friendly treats & learn how to make homemade caramel apples!

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GlamDish: Autumn Treats

How many kids should you invite? Is it okay to expect gifts every year or should you try out the “no gift” trend? Gift registries for kids parties? What’s the best way to deal with rude parents?

Lisa Kothari from Peppers and Pollywogs - a wonderful kids party planning website/blog - wrote a truly fabulous article for us on Kids Party Etiquette that answers all of these questions and more. Click here to check it out!

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Kids Party Etiquette

If you’ve followed HWTM for a while or checked out the party themes section, you may have noticed that I love to use scrapbooking supplies as tools for entertaining. Scrapbooking supplies are affordable, and there’s so much variety available from holiday and occasion themes to fabulous color palettes and modern prints that the possibilities for the look of your party are seemingly endless!

For more on this concept and an example tabletop, visit today’s post over at Simply Stated.

A few more examples from the party themes section where scrapbooking supplies are especially prevalent:
• Autumn Spice Thanksgiving
• Santa Baby holiday party
• Love Comes Softly bridal shower
• Bling Baby baby shower

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Simply Stated: Easy Entertaining - Scrap it!

This fabulously modern snack set from Swedish design company Sagaform contains 3 cool little serving bowls, each with thier own unique serving spoon/fork combinations… $40/set at aplusrstore.com. (Great gift idea!)

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Sagaform’s Snack Set

I’ve adored this Pucci Inspired Wedding from Brides.com for a while now, and the idea behind a fabric-inspired soirée actually flows along the same lines as yesterday’s post on scrapbook-inspired entertaining.

Fabric is perfect for creating table runners and embellishing party favors, vases, and guest books. You can also scan the fabric pattern into your computer for use on printed materials like invitations, menus, and favor tags…and use either the paper prints or the fabric itself to create cool favors similar to the little perfume bottles pictured above. At $85 per piece though, those perfume bottles seem a little pricey for a party! So how about creating some themed DIY paper weights or cute party favor keychains instead?

Another tip: cool, inexpensive scarves work great for dressing up vases & tabletops as well!

{photography by Dasha Wright}

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Fabric-Inspired Entertaining