A Lifestyle & Parenting Blog

Saturday, 4 March 2017

Involving The Children In Your Next Dinner Party

Keeping up with your friends can be quite tricky when you have a young family. You may find you have very little time to get out and about for coffee or nights out. 

A great compromise is to throw a dinner party at your house, this will save you on babysitting costs and will mean you can have a nice drink without having to drive.

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Depending on the age of your children it might be hard to organise an impressive dinner and keep the little ones out of your hair, so instead of battling to keep them away, why not set them some tasks and get a little help.

Canapes are a really wonderful way of getting your guests in the mood and delivering a really stylish event. They are a great introduction to a special night and will make your guests feel like they are part of something really special. 

Brilliantly simple to prepare and serve you could buy a little time by asking your children to get some inspiration from a website. Checking out a cool company which serve up canapes to their guests might get their little minds buzzing over some creative ideas.

Small hands are required for small food and if you can choose an easy canape such as tomato and basil sticks or little pastries with salmon and cream cheese, you may find that your children are more capable of constructing them than you are. Washed hands are a must, you want to make sure your guests aren’t sharing more than their creative skills. 

Set up a nice clean space and then show them what you need and how many. If you prepare all the cutting and cooking. They can help by doing the fiddly bits. This might give you enough time to work on the main dinner courses and will certainly keep the children busy.

Once your guests arrive, give your kids some responsibilities. These will be age dependent. Older children can offer drinks and let you know what has been ordered, then carry them to your friends. 

Younger children could collect up coats and take them to a spare room for later in the evening. Providing they are confident at carrying you can ask children of any age to serve the canapes and keep your guests entertained whilst you make your final preparations. Having a couple of waiters at your event is certainly going to make your life easier.

When bedtime comes, you could have a deal with them. Perhaps setting up a film night in their bedrooms so you don’t have to sit with them and leave your friends unattended. Just pop your head up every now and then so they don’t feel you have forgotten about them. 

Chances are they will be popping their heads downstairs more often than you’d like, but allow it. It’s exciting for children when there are people in their homes and providing you aren’t having parties every night, one late bedtime isn’t going to hurt.
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