Jerry and I had the pleasure of hosting our friends from church this weekend for part of a progressive dinner.  The way progressive dinner works is someone hosts the appetizer, then you drive to the next house for the entree, and a final house for the dessert.  We improvised on this particular gather since the couple that was making the appetizer didn't have the means to host on this occasion.  We offered to physically host the first two courses and make food for the entree.  There was a little bit of thought and planning for this and Jerry and I put our thinking caps on last week to make the event a success.

The Space

Being able to host requires some space and the right space.  We are fortunate to have a house that has lots of room to have company.  We have a front sitting room, an 18 foot dining room, and living room in the back.  We were able to have our appetizer in the front room, and entree around the dining room table.  Gardner held down the fort in the back room (which is baby proofed).  We had to pull up some additional chairs around our table during dinner, but we all fit around it! It made for a great night of fellowship! Our dining room is pictured below.

One the the things we love about our house is that sound doesn't carry from the front of the house to the back of the house and people are able to find the most comfortable spot to hang out as we prepare food.  We also dislike this as we try and sometimes speak to each other from separate ends of the house.  #firstworldproblems

The one negative about having all this space, we have to clean the space.  This is quite a task!  While I was away at a conference last week, Jerry took care of making sure the house was in top shape to host.  Kudos to him for working hard to make this happen!

The Food

Picking the right food is also really important for hosting a party.  Our friends Dresden and Luke made a delicious corn salsa and broccoli for appetizer.  This paired incredibly well with our grilled chicken that was marinated in soy sauce, brown sugar, oil, and vinegar.  We also had twice baked potatoes which were delicious.  Jerry is the cook in our house and he did a fantastic job. 

Selecting these items was important.  We had someone that was allergic to dairy and we had to take this into consideration.  We also wanted to make sure that making these items were easy to make so that they were hot when it was time to eat.  While we did do a lot of prep preparing our marinade and cooking the potatoes so that it was ready to bake when people arrived everything came out quickly. 

We headed out after dinner to Blake and Kristen's for dessert and surprised her by celebrating her birthday! 

Kristen had also made dirt cake and delicious lemon blueberry cake.  Again, food choice is essential!  Jerry had two helpings of dirt cake (thanks to Blake for serving him).

Overall, it was a wonderful night of fellowship and great food.  I can't wait to do it again soon!