Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Using a Diagram to Plan Thanksgiving

Now that we have the initial plans and menu, we can start brining the dinner to life.  One element of a fun event is to create a flow throughout your entire home.  In order to do this, I usually create a diagram to visualize where different  food will be served, this then allows me to create a serving schedule.  The reason why this is so important is because people will usually congregate where you are serving food and therefore you want to put stations throughout different areas.  Finally, I use the diagram to determine different areas that I want to decorate.  This allows me to plan ahead and not miss an area that has decorating potential.  


The diagram above is what I've put together for our Thanksgiving meal.  You can easily create this diagram by going to www.floorplanner.com which is a free service.  Once you create your floor plan, continue to reuse for future parties.  As you can see, we're going to serve the appetizers towards the back of our home.  We're doing this because we want space when we're finishing up the meal around the kitchen and also the Patriots are playing at that time and we're serving the appetizers next to the TV to make for happy guests :).  We're going to begin with the soup which we'll serve at the table and then serve the dinner buffet style at the counter because there will not be enough room for the platters at the table.  Finally, we wanted to create a dessert table to put all the desserts on display.  By laying out the flow of the party on a diagram it allows you to think through all elements of the party and, again, plan ahead for very few surprises the day of the dinner.

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