5 Ways to Glam Up Your Party On a Budget

It is very easy to glam up your soiree on a budget. Here are a few tips on throwing a fancy party on a budget:

Light it up. For evening affairs, it is amazing what the right lighting can do. Candles provide a great glow that makes everything look more elegant and more beautiful – including people! (Your guests will thank you for that). Arrange them in clusters or individually, take advantage of mirrors that may amplify the effect, and create extra drama by arranging them at different heights. Alternatively (or together with the candles), if you have dimmers on your lights, turn them down till you get just the right level.

Find your green thumb. Well, you don’t really need a green thumb for this, but adding flowers can add some elegance to any event. There is no need to go overboard on this - you can arrange a bunch of long stem roses in a prominent place where the light picks it up, or in front of a mirror. You can also have single stems in bud vases spread out on tables in the room. For dinner, a great idea is to cut the stems short and arrange them very tightly in short vase – square or rectangular work well, but a round one works just as well. The idea is to have them arranged tightly.

Keep it Simple. With your candles, flowers, crisp linen, and stylish stemware, you can create an elegant look very inexpensively. Your guests will notice the ambience, not the price tag. When shopping for décor elements, choose one theme and run with it. Discount stores, thrift stores and party supply stores are a good resource for finding inexpensive decorations, but you will be surprised at how much you already have in your garage or other storage. Look for what useable things you have first, and remember that you can be innovative in your ‘adaptive reuse’ of what you have. Beware of mixing kitschy and cheesy with elegant! Go for fewer items that will make the most impact.

Presentation, presentation. This is one of my favorite tips. No one has to know the food and drink is cheap – glam it up and make it pop! I serve water out of my filter, but in an elegant pitcher with some ice and slices of lemon, or cucumber, or sprigs of rosemary…you get the drift. People eat with their eyes first, so use beautiful platters and garnish the food to make it interesting. When it comes to platter and plates, I am partial to stark white plates with unique architectural details. Decanters always look great on any table and add something extra to inexpensive wine – except for the taste…

Use a time machine. Talking about wine – a not-exactly-inexpensive way to improve the taste of wine is The Perfect Sommelier ($40, theperfectsommelier.com), which transforms a wine’s molecules to help it age and mature in about 30 minutes. This will help save you some money down the line. A great investment, if you ask me.

Stock Your Bar: Everything You Need To Know About Liquor

I'm not sure if it's because I took some mixology classes, but there's something about having a nicely-stocked bar at home that appeals to me. But with so many kinds of alcohol available and so many brands to choose from, stocking a bar can be a daunting task for many. Here are some tips to help you stock your bar at home with an adequate variety of liquor for when you have guests.

The first thing to know is that you don't need to have every kind of liquor to have a decently stocked bar. Probably the four most popular liquors are vodka, gin, light rum and tequila. Others you can get will include brandy and whiskey. Most common drinks can be made with these.

The Cheap Party - 5 More Ways To Throw a Party Inexpensively

Here are some more ways to save money on throwing a party:

The Cheap Party - 25 Ways To Throw a Party Inexpensively: Part I

Throwing a party, whatever the occasion, can be pretty expensive if you let it, and many times, the little things add up pretty fast! Thankfully, there are ways to throw an elegant shindig without breaking the bank. Here are 25 of my favorite tricks of the trade:

How to Host a Dinner Party - The Cocktail

Enjoy this video:

Hangover Remedies

It's another Friday, and with it comes the tingling sensation of unwinding and having some fun. For the non-teetotallers, having drinks with the guys or gals may be in the cards. Sometimes happy hours stretch into the bewitching hours, and, the next day, those happy hours result in some not-so-happy-hours. Otherwise called The Hangover.
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I'd like to say I'm familiar with the symptoms of a hangover, but I honestly couldn't, but many people have experienced it - the throbbing headache, nausea, vomiting and general malaise. What happens is, the body converts the alcohol into a toxic chemical called acetaldehyde, which causes those symptoms. 


 Dr. John Emsley of London's Royal Society of Chemistry and author of the Consumer's Good Chemical Guide has a simple hangover remedy: toast with honey or golden syrup and lots of fluid. The toast and honey provides the body with the sodium, potassium, and fructose it needs to adjust the balance. If you need more alcohol, or 'the hair of the dog' to make you feel better, that may be a sign of an alcohol problem....


Now, if you're like me and prefer to avoid the experience altogether, Dr. Emsley has four tips for you:

• Drink a glass of milk first. It slows down the absorption of alcohol.
• Stick to clear alcohol like gin or vodka. You want to avoid the effect of the chemicals in dark alcohol...
• Punctuate your drinking with soft drinks or water. This slows down you alcohol intake. Fructose isn't bad either.
• Drink a lot of water before you go to bed. Alcohol dehydrates the body (remember the frequent bathroom visits?) and that can make your hangover worse.

Thank goodness it's Friday! Drink responsibly and have a fabulous weekend!

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Bottoms up: A wine primer

The thought of being a wine connoisseur is enough to conjure up images of highfalutin, snobbish people mumbling fancy jargon. Having to choose a wine in a fine restaurant can make some nervous. It hasn’t helped that there are enough ‘rules’ and myths about wine that can make many people feel a little intimidated. But you can get to know wine pretty well.

First rule out the window: Don’t have red wine with fish or chicken or white wine with beef. True, it’s a good guideline, but by no means a hard and fast rule. Also, an expensive wine doesn’t mean a great tasting or a great quality wine. So where does one begin with wine?


Let's start at the beginning: opening a bottle of wine. Opening a bottle of wine is a simple art that anyone can learn very easily. Here's a video showing you how:

The senses are very important in appreciating any wine. What is its color like? If it is a white wine, is clear or hazy or opaque? What does it smell like? Does it smell like flowers, fruits, wood? What does it taste like? Can you pick up caramel, or citrus, or strawberry? How does it feel in your mouth? Is it smooth or bold or coarse? Don't worry of you if you don't can't pick up any of these initially - like anything else, it take practice to perfect.

When pouring wines, you don’t want to fill the glass – and especially for red wines, keep them below a third of the glass. Red wines need a lot more room to ‘breathe’, that’s why they are drunk in wide bowled glasses. It also makes it easier to swirl it without spilling the drink. Swirling wine helps to aerate it to bring out the flavors. You might notice that red wine drunk soon after it is poured may not taste as good as it does after it’s been swirled and left to sit for a few minutes.

Most basic white table wines would be considered 'dry' because they are fermented until all the sugars were converted to alcohol - making it dry. Examples of these would include the Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc. Some wines, like those made from the Chenin Blanc grapes might be considered 'off dry' because they have some residual sweetness to them, but not enough to make them a dessert wine. The sweetness of a wine can also be affected by the ripeness of the grape and the presence of flavors verging on buttery or vanilla. California Chardonnays and wines from the Loire Valley, Alsace, Germany and Austria tend to be slightly sweeter.

Apart from dessert wines such as port, most red table wines are completely dry. Examples would be the Cabernet Sauvignon, Bordeaux, Merlot, Pinot Noir, and Syrah. Note that naturally occurring compounds in wines called tannins might have the effect of making you mouth feel dry, but that does not make a wine dry. Tannins are a function of texture, and dryness a function of taste (sweetness, or the lack thereof).

In fine restaurants, after you select your wine, the sommelier will bring you your wine and pour you a little bit. Swirl it around first, then sniff it deeply, taking note of the aromas. This is called the 'nose. Then taste it. Take a nice, healthy sip and move it around in your mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it. Remember that you taste different flavors in different areas of your tongue. If you like it, the sommelier will serve your party.

As the French say, "A votre santé!" Enjoy.

The Perfect Dinner Party

I love to entertain and people always ask me what the secret is to throwing the perfect party. Today, I will focus on elements for a mid-sized dinner party for 6 to 12 people. Now, for any gathering to be successful, you will need what I call 'the Fab Five': Atmosphere, Drink, Food, Company and You.

Creating an atmosphere for a successful event will include elements such as lighting, music, decor and any other elements that will enhance the atmosphere of any gathering. Focus on what the guests with see, smell, feel (tactile and emotional). Candles are usually a good idea, creating soft, forgiving lighting and hiding a multitude of sins! Music should not be too noticeable if you want to encourage guests talking, but just enough to create an ambience. Flowers can be a nice touch, but, really almost anything can be used to make great centerpieces.

Give your guests something to drink within 5 minutes of their arrival - wine, a martini, beer, champagne - just something! And always remember to have something for people who do not drink alcoholic beverages. Water and soda will not cut it! Get creative: seltzer with fruit garnishes is a very simple mocktail idea. (A 'mocktail' is a virgin, or non-alocholic cocktail). You can find other mocktail ideas at websites such as www.cocktailsonline.tv,  www.drinksmixer.com or www.barnonedrinks.com. Don't have people drinking for more than one hour before dinner is served - your guests will either drink too much, or get too hungry. It's called cocktail hour for a reason! Have about one bottle of wine per guest and probably a little more red than white. According to Esquire's The Big Black Book, red wine drinkers will generally not switch to white wine, but white wine drinkers might not mind as much.

Once your guests have drinks, have some hors d'oeuvres ready for them. Crudités with an assortment of dips are always a good idea, so is a fruit and cheese platter. But of course, you can make stuff as well. You are only limited by your creativity and how much time and effort you have available at your disposal. But don't give your guests too much to eat, otherwise, your painstakingly made dinner will go to waste!

If you are cooking dinner yourself, never, ever, try to make a dish you have never prepared before. Anything could go wrong. If you want to try something new, do a practice run first to make sure you can get it done the way it's supposed to be before you try making it for your guests. Also make sure you ask your guests if they have any dietary restrictions so you can plan your menu with that in mind.

If many of your guests will be strangers to one another, invite people you think have something in common. That way, you are free to interact with all your guests without thinking you need to babysit anyone. And, for the love of all that's good, don't invite people who don't like each other or are not talking to each other! It's safe to seat people in boy-girl-boy-girl fashion, but I prefer to separate couples and place people next to someone they may not have met before, but will have something in common. And, next to them, I'll seat someone they already know, just in case they need an out, if my hopes for connecting new people didn't work!

Finally, you should plan your prep time so you can spend as much time as possible with your guests and not trying to get things done. You need to enjoy your party as well. Your guests came because of you. Don't drink too much, so you can be alert. Just be your charming self, enjoy your company and everything else will fall into place and be just fine.

Happy entertaining!