Over the holidays, we hosted 12 people in our home – five members of our own family, and the rest, beloved extended family. This wasn’t our first time hosting, but after a few gos (and benefitting from experiencing the hospitality of other, more experienced hosts ourselves), it felt like our smoothest and most successful stay yet. I took notes throughout our time together, and would love to share a few tips while they’re still fresh!
1. Clear surfaces.
Before guests arrived, I moved through the house and cleared off every surface I could – counters, benches, side tables, coffee tables, desks. Your house is about to get a lot more chaotic, with not only many more bodies but their attendant cups/bags/chargers/water bottles/books. Creating space in advance not only gives those items a place to land, it helps to keep your home visually calm (which for me, helps with mental calm!).
2. Plan every meal.
And I mean EVERY meal. In previous years of hosting, I’d always plan out a menu, but I’d often purposefully leave gaps. Oh, I’d think, we’ll probably have leftovers then, or maybe we’ll go out for that meal. Reader, there were never leftovers. Reader, it took an hour for us to decide by committee whether we wanted to go out or get takeout, and what kind of food we were in the mood for.
This time, I made a plan for every single meal. I planned whether we would get takeout or whether we’d eat at a restaurant. I planned something for every breakfast. I planned for every lunch. With large groups, I’ve found that a laidback meal plan is not generous or community-spirited, it’s a firestorm of frustration and hangry kids waiting to happen.
Of course, we could and did veer from the plan throughout the week, but always being prepared with a Plan A was key to keeping everyone fed and happy.
3. Don’t forget the fun.
Speaking of meal plans: don’t forget that as the host (especially if it’s a holiday week!), you’re assuming the role of head magic-maker, at least on the food front. You know all those special little touches that delight you as a guest at your parents’ or friends’ home? It’s your turn! I’m thinking things like a festive cocktail with dinner, a mini charcuterie board in the afternoon, fun breakfasts, the traditional dessert that’s a part of every family Christmas, a post-present-opening pan of sliders, or an afternoon snack of hot pretzels.
This is not to say that all the fun or food needs to literally be created by you, but the shopping list might. Otherwise, you might be dooming yourself to a last-minute grocery store run :)
4. Buy more fruit than you think you need.
Speaking of grocery store runs: this tip just as easily could have been “buy more of everything than you think you need,” but I find fruit goes particularly fast. Costco is my favorite place to buy grapes, berries, bananas, clementines, and the like so I don’t have to feel miserly as I dole out fruit to kids at breakfast.
5. Get on the same page as your spouse about helper tasks.
I am fully owning that this might be a niche piece of advice for my own marriage – or perhaps it’s more universal. You tell me :)
John and I sometimes differ on how much help we want or need from our guests, especially when the guests are family members. What feels natural to me is a model where guests pitch in with almost everything. I’ve seen bonds strengthened over a sink full of suds and I know my family gets antsy if they feel like they’re sitting around when others are “working.” John, desiring to allow our guests to relax and to keep a sense of normalcy in the way things are run around the house, prefers that we do the bulk of household tasks as they come up.
Here’s what’s helped us moved past this clash: brainstorming in advance what jobs we both feel great about guests taking on AND which jobs we want to keep in our control. For example, my Dad took on the job of breaking down cardboard boxes and carting them to the recycling – so helpful! Or maybe there’s a family member who’s happy to make last-minute runs to the store. Maybe someone loves folding laundry and you don’t have strong feelings about how laundry is folded. But maybe you do have strong feelings about how the dishwasher is loaded :)
6. Plan for auxiliary trash and recycling…
Speaking of cardboard boxes (see how these are all connected? :)): 12 people will generally create a lot of trash and recycling, especially if you’re hosting your group over the holidays (think: gift packaging, wrapping paper, shipping boxes, bottles of fun beverages, etc.). To make matters worse, your regular trash and recycling pick-up might be delayed because of the holidays.
Before you get to the point where you’re surrounded by overflowing garbage cans and are blindly chucking cardboard boxes into your garage because the recycling’s full (ask me how I know), reserve a large cardboard box or two to serve as overflow trash and recycling receptacles. It will keep things SO much more organized.
7. …and secondary food storage.
This might not be needed if you have a large pantry, a garage refrigerator, or a chest freezer. We have none of those things, so we had to get a bit more creative to store the large amounts of food needed to feed 12 people three meals a day for several days.
Happily (though slightly embarrassingly), we still had a wire shelf on our porch that was removed during our kitchen refresh. Because of the low temperatures, we were able to store not only boxed and bagged goods on it, but even items that should have been in our refrigerator. If outside temperatures hadn’t cooperated, I would have conscripted our cooler.
Obviously, it’s most important to make sure your food stays at a safe temperature (you know John was on top of that!), but you will likely find it difficult to store enough food for several days in a single refrigerator/freezer. We definitely did.
Cousins to read with! Annie’s favorite part of houseguests!
8. Run a load of laundry every night.
I learned this one from watching my sister-in-law! Some of you may normally be one-load-a-day people, but we are not – we tend to do a few loads once a week. However, I’ve found it very helpful to run a small load every night when we have a large group of guests. That way, anyone can throw an item of clothing in that may have gotten stained during the day, and a fresh tablecloth and napkins are always at the ready. Speaking of which…
9. Use tablecloths (and make sure you have two).
One of my least favorite household chores is wiping down the table after meals, using a tablecloth makes it bearable. Our collection is nothing fancy – they’re mostly from Target or Amazon (like these pretty ones!) – but clean-up becomes super easy when you can simply scoop up the cloth and all the crumbs, give it a good shake outside, then pop it in the washing machine. Same for cloth napkins. Instead of trying to remember whose whose, just toss them in your daily load.
10. Hug your robot vacuum.
Our robot vacuum is a treasured member of the fam on an ordinary day, but with a big group of houseguests, it’s such a comfort knowing that the floors will be wiped clean overnight with minimal effort on our part. We still often have to do a mid-day sweep, but our little one-robot cleaning crew definitely lightens the load.
11. Institute the five-minute clean-up.
Our 12 guests included several children, all of whom greatly enjoyed playing with each other and seemingly every toy we own (often at the same time). I did my best to embrace this, but also regularly called for “5-minute clean-ups.” We’d do these before meals, before quiet time, before bedtime, before leaving the house – whenever it felt needed. With many hands pitching in, we usually had the play space back to baseline before the timer even dinged.
12. Edit your toy selection.
One thing that made 5-minute clean-ups easier was a thoughtful edit of our toys before guests arrived. If there are toys with tons of little pieces you don’t want to manage, toys that you know will cause squabbling, or toys that generally encourage rowdiness, consider moving them to a closet, the attic, or a playroom away from the main gathering spaces. For example, we kept our MagnaTiles in the main room, but I put the LEGO bin in the attic as well as a ride-on toy that usually lives downstairs.
13. Get outside every day.
This one doesn’t need much explanation, but it’s so important! A quick walk around the block or a longer hike refreshes everyone, burns off some energy, and is a nice chance to mix and match the group. Even though it was brisk, we’d bundle up for a quick spin around our neighborhood most nights after dinner, and tried to get outside at least one other time during the day, too.
No matter the size of your home or the makeup of your houseguests, hosting a large group is a big undertaking. I’ve found that the more preparation I do in advance, the easier it is to relax and enjoy my loved ones while I’m with them. I hope this post can help you do just that!
Of course, there are many more tips I could add (and I hope you’ll add your best nuggets in the comments!), but these were a few of the more obscure tidbits that really made a difference for us in the thick of things. Tuck this post away for when your next group is coming to town! :)
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, friends! I wanted to pop in and share our Christmas card before the big day passes us by. As always, we chose a design from Minted, though this is the first year in 9 years (!) that they were not a gift! The PR gal I’ve always worked with has moved on, and I didn’t have it in me to complete the rigamarole (posting, custom codes, stories, reels!) they ask influencers to do these days :) Regardless, I never considered a card from another option – the quality is beautiful and the designs are perfect. Here’s what we chose this year!
I’ll confess that I felt a bit scattered when sending our card to print, and didn’t include the names and ages of our children, the year, a piece of scripture, or a few additional photos on the back as I usually do – yeesh. Of course, names and ages are on our accompanying newsletter, but I like to have them on the card, too, in case they get separated in posterity.
This year, we opted to use the photo we snapped on Easter in our backyard in lieu of a photo session. It was an expensive year (ahem, kitchen, I’m looking at you), and it just seemed to make sense to go with a beautiful photo we already had!
And then, of course, we tucked a copy of our 2022 newsletter into each envelope:
I am seriously considering moving to an old-school narrative newsletter on folded, white 8.5×11 printer paper next year. Thoughts?! Would you find it weird if you got one in the mail? These types of missives used to be ubiquitous in the cards my family received growing up, and I loved reading them. And I’d be following in a proud family tradition :)
Wishing everyone celebrating a wonderful, restful, joyful weekend! I’ll see you back here next week for my Best of 2022 and 2022 Year in Review posts.
To say this post – this project – is a long time coming is… a bit of an understatement.
On November 3, 2019, I ordered the Purl Soho Advent Calendar Kit. A month later, I set a 2020 goal to complete it before December. “Two goals have dovetailed beautifully with this initiative:” I wrote, “wanting to spend less time on screens, and wanting to complete our new Advent calendar! After years of admiring this DIY calendar kit, I finally bit the bullet and purchased it. With many pieces, intricate details, and the need to learn new skills, I anticipate it will be a year-long project that will keep my hands busy in the evenings and on weekends, as well as produce a beautiful heirloom for our family!”
Keep my hands busy? Check. Beautiful heirloom for our family? Check. Year-long project? Hahahahahaha.
In June 2020, I reported in on the progress I’d made: almost none. All I had done at that point was open the box early in the year and quickly close it back up, wildly intimidated. From my brief peek at the instructions, I was under the impression that the whole project involved machine sewing, when in reality (and with thanks to kind encouragement from reader Carly, who completed the same kit and clued me in!), only the pockets required a machine.
With this realization, in August 2020, things took a major upward swing! While we were visiting John’s parents in Connecticut, I completed five whole ornaments under the tutelage of my wonderful mother-in-law. Once I got the hang of it, I was quickly sewing up a storm at nap times and in the evenings, but I honestly don’t know if I would ever have gotten started if she hadn’t been at my side. Thank you, Jean!!
I completed four more ornaments in September, and three more in October, then progress fell off a cliff when first-trimester nausea and tiredness hit in November and December (looking at you, Annie).
In 2021, I set a yearly goal of “prioritizing memory keeping,” an umbrella which included finishing the Advent calendar. And then, with a newborn and an Achilles injury and houseguests for six continuous weeks and kindergarten, I did not complete a single stitch until October, when I pulled the kit back out and embroidered the pocket numbers in cheery red floss. When we returned to Connecticut for Christmas, my angel mother-in-law gathered the pocket strips and sewed them together on her machine.
Friends, this was the first time this project felt like A Thing instead of a random collection of felt items. And it felt sooooooooo good!
Thus we arrive at the present year. In 2022, I learned from the pitfalls of my 2021 goals and got a little more strategic with my creative projects. Determined to finish the various projects I had underway and not have my efforts be scattered across all of them at once, I assigned each to a quarter. Finishing the Advent calendar got assigned to Q4, so I didn’t worry about picking it back up until October.
When fall rolled around, I opened my pretty pink box back up and got to work sewing sequins around the edge of the tree. Painstaking, but satisfying! In November, I sewed the tree to the backer and sewed on the hanging pole. And that (drumroll, please), meant that on the 1st of December in the year of our Lord 2022, I hung an actual Advent calendar on our actual wall that I had made with my own two actual hands. Praise and hallelujah and bless it to the heavens!
Was I finished with this project, though? No, dear reader, I was not finished: I still had six final ornaments to sew. I was bound and determined to complete them before Christmas, though, and so all month have been chipping away at them little by little. As of this writing, I have one more to sew, and I’m confident I can complete it before December 24th :)
Here we are: $98*, two and a half years, a little sweat equity from my mother-in-law, much encouragement from John and my children, and countless hours of detailed sewing later, we have a bonafide family heirloom. It is glorious. I love it. June and Shep have delighted in pinning the ornaments on one-by-one each day this month. It has secured a spot on the top-five list of things I’d save in a fire, assuming my family and pets have made it out safely.
The other day, as she watched me add beads to a tiny snowman, June asked which child I would lend the calendar to when they were older.** And wow, what a way to bring things full circle: the reason I was inspired to undertake this project in the first place is because my family had a very similar felt Christmas tree Advent calendar growing up. It was a mainstay in our front hallway throughout every December of my childhood; nothing was better than the days when it was my turn to pin the ornament on the tree. I hoped my children might feel the same way about this one, and early signs indicate that they just might. All those hours of sewing? Worth it, worth it, worth it.
I’m not sure if my two-and-half-year saga will encourage a single reader to pick up this kit, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Once I got over my initial fear, the directions really were quite easy to follow – it all just takes a bit of time. In fact, I got so comfortable that I ended up free-styling about half the ornaments. The directions call for you to make two of each type of ornament (two stars, two candy canes, etc.), but I liked the idea of each ornament being distinct. Plus, I wanted to translate some of the ornaments from my family’s calendar growing up, and include a few more Christian symbols in the mix, too. Once I had the basic know-how for making the ornaments, it was easy enough to make new patterns and sew my own designs. For those curious, our one-of-a-kind calendar includes a heart, letter, present, cross, ice skate, holly, angel, drum, crown, shepherd’s crook, and snowman along with Purl’s standard shapes.
Friends, thank you for coming along on this journey! If you have any questions about this kit, I’d be happy to answer! I hope this post might encourage you to take on your own creative project, knowing that no matter how long it takes, it will likely be worth it in the end. It most definitely has been for me. xo!
*I purchased the kit for $98 (minus a 10% off coupon for signing up for the email list) in 2019. Somehow, the price has swollen to $175 in 3 years?!? It is currently 25% off on the website (if the promotion isn’t active when you’re reading this, be sure to sign up to get the email discount). They also offer the option of buying the pattern and gathering your own supplies (which they kindly list for you). I think this could be a great option, but if you go this route do NOT skimp on the felt – I’d order it from Purl, because it is extremely high-quality, vibrantly-colored, and makes or breaks the project!
**Of course, I told her that I would be so happy to make her a calendar of her own when she was older. To which she responded that I should make sure to give myself plenty of time, because this one took me a few years (LOL). We agreed I’d start on each child’s when they left for college.
Over 13+ years of working in the creative industry, I have amassed some extraordinarily talented friends – many of whom I’ve shared right here with you all over the years. It is a joy to watch them do what they do and get to cheer them on along the way! And today, I have the extra delight of sharing a giveaway from one of my favorite duos, the gals behind Persnickety Gifts.
They’re smart, they’re funny, and they speak straight to the heart of the “pretty good mom” with their done-for-you stockings and other holiday baskets. If you love the idea of shopping small, curating thoughtful gifts, and creating everyday magic for your littles, but don’t have the patience, know-how, bandwidth, and/or desire to make it happen, this is for you!
Their done-for-you stockings couldn’t be easier: you choose your child’s age and gender on their website, and they send you a neatly-packaged bundle of goodies ready to tuck into their stocking on Christmas Eve. No paying shipping from 15 retailers or breaking down 15 boxes – just handpicked delights from small and lovable businesses. (And no weird surprises, either – you can see everything that will be included right in the listing!)
So fun, yes? And lucky for us, Persnickety was kind enough to let me give away one done-for-you stocking! Just leave a comment here with the gift you’re most excited to give this holiday, and which stocking bundle you’d choose (age + gender – and of course, you don’t have to follow their recommendations! I got Shep the 5-7 bundle even though he’s 4.). Consider following Persnickety on Instagram or signing up for their newsletter for a little holiday magic throughout the year, if you’d like.
I’ll choose a winner on Friday! If you’re too excited to wait, go ahead and use code EMILY for free shipping on any order :)
Before we go, let’s talk about the grown-ups for a moment. Do grown-ups get stockings in your house, too? If so, here are a few of my favorite ideas, some of which will be appearing in my own house this Christmas morning…
