Entertaining in a small home

The Buffet/Open House we hosted on Christmas Eve (and made a fort for) came from my grandmother’s tradition (the gathering, not the fort). A few years ago, my mom started up again. And this past year was the first time we’d hosted it. We were excited to include Phillip’s family too, even though that’s a lot of people for our little place.

As I was thinking about how to make it all work, I kept googling things like “buffet in small space” and getting unhelpful results that either linked to furniture on shopping sites or articles that focused on formal holiday spreads with lavish decorations. Since I was scratching my head over where to even fit the coffeemaker, most of the suggestions – a decorative 4-foot potted tree, for example – were out of the question.

The assumption seems to be that if you’re hosting a holiday gathering, you have thousands of square feet to spare and plenty of time to paint portraits of each of your guests for placecards. I don’t have either, but I believe you can still entertain in a smaller home and that you can keep it as simple as you choose.

I did finally find a few helpful tips, so I decided to pass those on to you, along with my own observations on what worked out for us and what I wish I’d done differently.

Scheduling

Making the party open house allows people to come and go, depending on the rest of their holiday plans. It also (hopefully) spreads out when everyone will be arriving, which is great if you’re fitting a lot of people into a small space.

To choose a start time, I checked with a few family members to see what time they’d be heading to church services or other events and made sure we were starting early enough for them to stop by beforehand if they wanted to. What I didn’t find out until later was how many people (even with cushy desk jobs) had to work regular hours that day. I wish we could’ve accommodated their schedules, as well.

Space

When you live in a condo/apartment/less-roomy dwelling, space really is the final frontier. If you’re going to boldly go into holiday party territory, you really have to think about physically fitting in food, dishes, appliances, seating, and people.

Plan ahead for the seating you’ll likely need – plus backup seating – and leave room for traffic flow. In addition to chairs in the house and back patio (it was a gorgeous day), we opened up our back gate and put some chairs in our (admittedly, not-so-scenic) parking spaces, just in case a ton of people came at once.

If your table space is limited, focus on finger foods. Also, keep in mind that some people aren’t that comfortable balancing plates on their laps. Try to have the option of some table space somewhere, even if it’s a coffee table, tray table(s), or desk (with everything important cleared out of spill-range – there will be spills). I opted to use my desk in the living room for serving, because there wasn’t a lot of room to sit around it anyway, and this allowed me to keep my kitchen table open for seating.

The best tip I read while I was planning was to split up your buffet if you need extra space. You can put drinks, desserts, and/or snacks somewhere separate from the main spread. This was huge for me, since there was no way everything would have fit on my kitchen counter.

Finally, think of the children. If you don’t have a yard or playroom that they can roam free in, find a spot for a fort or kid nook where they can play. If anyone will be bringing an infant, also think about a place in a quieter room where they can console a fussy little one, breastfeed, or set up a Pack ‘N Play if they need to.

Serving

Make it easy as possible for people to serve themselves. Pour coffee, cut cake, and clear plates as needed, and then get out of the way! As people arrived, I tried to point out where everything was and invite them to help themselves and let me know if they needed anything. In my head, I had made super cute labels for all the food. In reality, I ran out of time to make that happen.

Don’t feel like you have to put everything out at once (great tip from a caterer)! This allows you to use smaller serving dishes and just refill them as needed.

If you’re doing an open house over a longish span of time, make sure you keep everything at a safe temperature – employing warming trays, crockpots, ice packs, etc. for things that need to be kept hot or cold.

Having snacks and drinks ready to go can buy you time if everything’s not quite ready. Due to some last-minute shuffling, this wasn’t the case for me. Having the punch done so that people could have started there would have taken a lot of the pressure off. In an ideal world, everything would have been ready to go before guests started to arrive. But it’s not an ideal world – see the “serenity” section below.

Serenity

Arrange for and accept help. Ask someone who likes taking photos to take a few and send them to you. (I didn’t do that this time, which is why most of my photos are from after the party.) Make sure you have at least one person there with you early to help with last-minute trips to the store (in this case, my dad), things you just haven’t gotten to yet (Mom), and final details that set the ambience, like lighting candles and putting on music (which I always think I’ll do but Phillip always gets done). Let people bring food. Go with the flow when help doesn’t totally fit the plan.

Sit down at some point. Also eat something. I didn’t do either of these things as early I could (and probably should) have.

Be ready to ditch what’s not working or that shiny idea you just ran out of time for. Accept the things you cannot change.