How to Host Parties at Home - Top Ten Tips

When we first met with our architect about five years ago, he asked us how we envisaged living in our home once it had been extended. “We want to host lots of parties”, we said. And that’s exactly what we do - birthday parties for the kids, Easter egg hunts, summer solstice parties, dinner parties, my 40th birthday party, Bonfire night parties, Christmas parties… any excuse to get the prosecco glasses out and switch the disco lights on.

Our middle daughter’s after-school birthday party turned into a prosecco party when the parents turned up to collect their kids and stayed on to drink in the sunshine :-)

Birthday cake time at my Gatsby-themed party.

Forming an orderly queue in the garden for a whack at the pinata.

We designed the house specifically to cater for large numbers of people coming, going, drinking and dancing (the maximum number we had for one of our Bonfire parties was 88, which happened by accident after my husband and I kept independently inviting people without mentioning it to each other…). So the ground floor is open plan, with the dining and living room knocked together, and the kitchen open to the dining room with a big peninsula for folk to sit at. We also have a separate playroom on the ground floor for the kids that can be seen through a large panel of internal glass, so you can check on the kids but not hear them… and big bifolds opening onto the deck and the garden. Of course, this kind of set up is also perfectly suited to our rowdy family life, so it works for us on a day to day basis too.

Autumn leaf decorations at our annual Bonfire Party. Folk love to congregate at the kitchen peninsula.

Keeping the kids in the living room while the Easter Bunny secretly fills the garden with eggs.

Watching fireworks from the deck steps that we installed basically for this purpose.

A roomful of children marvelling at Mr Tinsel, the very tall magician.

However, whatever the size or layout of your house, you can obviously throw a super-fun party. We’ve learned a few useful hacks over the years, so as it’s nearly New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d share some tips on how we organise our home to host social gatherings.

Before people arrive, we prepare the house. This usually takes about half a day.

First, we move the furniture around. We extend or shrink the dining table depending on whether we think people will be sitting to eat or standing to drink and chat, put out more chairs in sociable groups, indoors and outdoors (we keep a few folding Ikea chairs in the cellar), roll up the rugs and hide them upstairs, and put away anything breakable or that we don’t want the kids playing with (we have a couple of big plastic cars that create carnage when kids find them and try and ride them through a crowd). I also don’t enjoy picking up hundreds of pieces of Lego from the floor, so we often remove the Lego boxes from the playroom before people come over.

People generally sit down to eat at our Bonfire parties so we add a couple of extra leaves to the table.

We assumed folk wouldn’t want to sit down and eat at my birthday party, so we kept the table smaller in its day-to-day position on the left of the room.

We also usually do some set-up outdoors, too. Sometimes we put up the gazebo outside for smokers to congregate under if it’s raining. I usually put the picnic bench and parasol up somewhere in the garden too.

I pegged a tarpaulin in front of the picnic table so people wouldn’t have to walk on the muddy grass.

In the kitchen, I clear the worktops, and put out bottles and glasses. We have a few boxes of Ikea prosecco, martini, margarita, gin and wine glasses that I keep in our ‘party drawers’ under the peninsula, and bring out when needed (I prefer not to use plastic cups for environmental reasons). I have a few galvanised tubs that are normally used for storing things like shoes and hats, which I tip out temporarily and replace with ice cubes for parties - folk invariably arrive with bottles and it’s easiest if they can just chuck them into a handy bucket. Plastic tubs also work well, although the bright colours usually don’t suit my vintage vibe ;-)

Galvanised bucket and a safety notice courtesy of our eldest girl.

Lots and lots of glasses at my birthday party.

If we’re serving food, I stack all our plates on the dining table, along with all our cutlery in a bowl. Again, I prefer not to use disposable plates, which means some folk get a nice Sophie Conran Portmeirion plate while others get a plastic Peppa Pig job, but no one seems to mind. I try to think of what people might ask for - kitchen roll, hand towels, lemons for gin, corkscrew, beer bottle opener and so on - and leave them out in a visible spot.

Sophie Conran china and Disney cups ready to go. I put cutlery in a big, shallow dish so it’s easy to grab.

I usually get a few big bowls ready so that when folk turn up with crisps, snacks and sweets, I can just decant them and serve immediately. What, serve from the packet?? I’m not an animal ;-) I have also acquired an assortment of vintage and otherwi… — I usually get a few big bowls ready so that when folk turn up with crisps, snacks and sweets, I can just decant them and serve immediately. What, serve from the packet?? I’m not an animal ;-) I have also acquired an assortment of vintage and otherwise pretty serving implements that come in handy at potluck parties.

I always put out bins and buckets for folk to dispose of empties, paper/cardboard, food waste and general rubbish. Our everyday bins are hidden in cupboards that you have to tap with your foot to open, which doesn’t work too well when you’ve got 80 people in your kitchen kicking the sink unit like they're trying to score a goal... So now I put out plastic tubs, labelled ‘glass’ or ‘cardboard’ in best Ned Flanders style - I even chuck a couple of empties into each bin to give people the idea… may sound like overkill, but you honestly don’t want to spend your entire party telling one person after another where to put their beer can, or their kid’s chewed up fairy cake. We also put our wheelie bins in front of the deck so that folk outside can dispose of their empties.

I cover our pale grey linen sofas with layers of blankets and towels. It doesn’t look pretty, but it looks prettier than they would do once covered in red wine and mud stains… Our pink velvet loveseat gets that same treatment.

Various friends of ours put comedy crime scene style tape over their stairs or doorways to encourage folk to stick to certain parts of the house - we’ve never done this before, but we did once put an out-of-reach temporary bolt on our middle daughter’s bedroom after it got trashed by a couple of over-enthusiastic junior guests at a previous party. We also once projected a movie onto the wall in our bedroom (the largest room upstairs) which kept the kids occupied for at least 15 minutes, and we ended up with a bed full of popcorn that we then had to sleep in, so probably won’t be doing that again.

Once the basic house prep is done, we organise the lighting and sound. We have a Sonos system that plays music in various rooms in the house, and Philips Hue bulbs that are controlled via our phones and can be set to various wacky colours. I like pink and purple shades for parties - and definitely not too bright; cool white electric overhead lights are grim for creating atmosphere. We also have a disco ball light thingie that I bought on Amazon for about a tenner, and I hang up all our camping fairy lights. One of our mates is a sound engineer who kindly lends us a professional speaker, and brings along his decks and mixer. Otherwise, I have a Sonos party playlist that I add to whenever I think of a particularly funky tune :-) which includes everything from Girls Aloud to Madonna to the Killers, Snap! and New Order.

I like to decorate the house according to the party theme - the only person who ever notices is my artistic friend Caroline (representing, Caroline!) but that’s OK, I really just do it for my own enjoyment. So for my birthday party I made about fifty tissue paper pompoms and suspended them from invisible thread in a rainbow wave. We have invisible thread permanently criss-crossing the rooms on the ground floor, as hanging things like balloons or pompoms from the ceiling is a quick way of creating an instant effect. And for Bonfire night I hang up leaf shaped bunting that I made for our wedding eleven years ago, and attach a few real sycamore or cherry leaves that the girls collect from the garden. I also like cutting massive branches from the garden and displaying them in big vases - I have a few antique carboys that are perfect for this.

Rainbow pompoms and a massive speaker at my birthday party.

By this stage, folk are probably close to turning up. I find it helpful to think about what folk are likely to do immediately upon arrival. Typically my husband lets people in, to save both of us abandoning whatever we’re doing and racing to the door. Once in, people will need someone to leave coats and bags. We have a cloakroom, which I usually clear of our own coats before people arrive, in order to create space. You can also direct people to chuck coats in a bedroom.

Most people will want a drink of some kind upon arrival. Our friends hosted a Christmas party recently where they had a tray of prosecco served with pomegranate seeds ready and waiting, which I thought was a good idea. Most folk in my experience are happy to initially drink whatever you put into their hand. I like to serve rose lemonade in prosecco glasses to drivers and non-drinkers, with a variety of sodas, squashes and fruit juices available too. I usually ask tea-drinkers if they could kindly make their own brews, and leave mugs, milk, tea bags, spoons and sugar next to the kettle to enable this - generally at parties when there are lots of folk arriving at once, it isn’t practical to undertake a lengthy brew-making process myself. At my 40th we arranged for the teenage daughters of friends to waitress for us, which was an amazing luxury and meant I could actually enjoy my own party instead of spending the whole night running round with a wine bottle.

We serve various kinds of food at parties - my favourite is a pot-luck party, when everyone brings a dish. The downside to this is that you end up with thirty different dishes arriving within about a half hour window, which all need to be unpacked and re-heated and displayed, but it’s worth it to avoid the pain of having to cook or otherwise prepare food for a houseful of folk… We have also arranged pizza deliveries, hosted braais where people arrived armed with sausages and burgers, served M&S canapes, and for my 40th birthday party treated everyone to a fully catered Brazilian bbq courtesy of Manchester BBQ Company, which was amazing, but not to be repeated until my 50th :-)

Hello, there’s a Brazilian bbq underway on my patio.

Folk queuing in the kitchen for a crack at the curry, chilli, focaccia, aubergine parmigiana, and cheeseburger wellington.

We sometimes have bonfires at our parties - especially for our Bonfire and summer solstice parties. I get really boring at this point and insist that my husband (who is always on fire duty) doesn’t have anything alcoholic to drink until the fire is safely dying down. It didn’t stop him earlier this year from using power tools to cut an overly long branch down to size while the other end was literally on fire, mind…. but at least it was a soberly-made decision… I also make sure we have buckets of water and a hosepipe immediately to hand. Fires are lovely to gather around, and folk have obviously been doing this for thousands of years - we’ve never had any problems at all, but I prefer to err on the side of safety. On the same vein, I usually don’t have very much to drink myself until much later on when all our guests are fed and watered, and the kids are asleep.

I find that generally guests are willing to help out, and it’s useful to think in advance of what jobs need doing - whether this is answering the door, tending the bbq, slicing and buttering baguette, or going round with a bottle topping up glasses. Trying to do everything yourself is jolly hard work, so don’t hesitate to delegate to folk who are kind enough to offer.

By 11pm I’ve usually completely lost track of what’s going on, some of my kids are asleep in their beds, others are running wild around the house, the dogs have been let out and are running round hoovering up (safe) snacks, the lights are turned down, the music is turned up, and I’ve got a bunch of folk bouncing around in the living room to Insomnia to the beat of an African drum courtesy of our friend Nikos. Good times.

Every party should include a group of professional drummers.

All that remains is the clean-up the next day - which, if you’ve had a good system of empties and waste food disposal, shouldn’t be *too* epic…

Happy hosting!