Welcome To Party Time

Summer is in full swing and what's the best way to celebrate than with a party. Yesterday my roommate and I threw a party to celebrate all things summer. It was my first major party that I was hosting (or at least helping with the hosting) since college. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to next one.

Throwing parties now is very similar to parties I threw in College. Major differences include more food, better drinks and the number of people to help clean up (there were seven people in a house on campus as oppose to an apartment with just me and my roommate).

For anyone wanting to throw a party and need a little advice, below are some pieces I picked up from my roommate and lodgemates.

1) Pick a simple theme and is seasonally appropriate (also that isn't offensive to another culture). This is helpful because decorations will likely be easy to find and might be on sale. If you decide to not have a theme that's okay too.

2) Make your apartment / house look clean. I don't mean do a full scrub down before the party, just a quick rub down so that people aren't questioning the green stuff growing in your sink (just kidding). Parties tend to be messy and you have to clean up after them anyway. Why put in all of the effort to make you apartment spotless before hand only to have to clean up all over again the next day?

3) Recruit people to help out with set up and clean up. You will need the help. I don't know how many times I've woken up after a party, looked around and wished I wasn't the one who needed to clean up. It's a little less daunting with a few extra hands.

4) The type of food to have. This is tricky because I feel it depends on the type of part. If you are throwing a dinner party or back yard BBQ it's kind of a given that there will be a lot of food and enough to cover at least one meal. If it's neither of those than I would suggest some finger foods. Things that are easy to put together and clean up after. Chips and dip are good bases for these parties, but not usually enough. Small sandwiches, meats and cheeses with crackers, and plenty of desserts keep people filled up.

5) Have people bring something (drinks are the best recommendation). When I was in college, my lodgemates and I threw a party within the first few days of moving in. We had a supply of drinks and some chips when we started the party. The next morning we didn't have any more chips, but about three times as many drinks as we had started with. Yesterday we asked everyone to ether bring a drink or a snack. We currently have a cooler full of drinks and no more tuna sliders.

Of course these are suggestions. All parties are different. Heck there have been many parties where it's just a group of friends who order pizza. Clean up, though, still sucks.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post or it really pissed you off, please like, share or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. Now I just need to be ready for work tomorrow. Joys.

Welcome To New People

          Happy fall equinox everyone! It is officially my favorite season with all my favorite flavors. Pumpkin spice lattes here I come. Now hopefully I don’t go broke after I run out of my Starbucks gift cards. Now for the movie specials to start again, I miss the Disney Channel Original Fall Movies. They were usually a little on the cheesy side, but still better than anything they have been producing in the last five or so years (heck more like ten years). Also pumpkin beer is awesome.

A lot of things happened this week. The guy who lived above me, I mentally called him Mysterious Footstep Man because I could hear him walking around, moved out. I never did get to make him brownies. Maybe I will meet the next person or people who live there. I discovered the show Sleepy Hollow. It looks pretty cool, it has me interested. I also went on a picnic date (major blush).

                The date was awesome, but since this is cyberspace I will not be giving too many details. Anyway, we went to a park not too far away and found a picnic area. All of the food was great and the weather held out (though we were under a covered pavilion). Not too long after we started eating, another couple sat down to picnic at the table next to ours. We started talking and eventually it lead to us sharing food.

                They thought we were sweet and offered for us to try some of their crabs and shrimp. We accepted and offered for them to try our barbeque. For the record we had a ton of barbeque that there was just no way we were going to finish along with several other side dishes, so we offered for them to try some. It was all delicious. We then started comparing notes on the best barbeque and seafood. We all agreed that there is nothing like crabs from Maryland, other states just do not know how to do it.

                They then asked us about how long we had been dating. We told them about a month and they told us the story of how they met. Apparently the husband had had a roommate dating his wife’s sister. He showed up one day to pick up the sister for his roommate and met his future wife. Her initial reaction to him (asking for her sister): “why would you want to talk to her?”  It was pretty funny. They had been living near where I live now and eventually had come back to the area.

                It is interesting how small a world it was for us to meet them. They were fun to talk to. They had been married for twenty six years and had only dated for three months before they tied the knot. That was the only part that was a little awkward. We were both blushing by the end of the conversation. I hope we run into them again.