Planning a Party.

Whether you are having a few friends to bridge, planning your parents' golden wedding or giving a birthday-party for the young son or daughter, your duties as caterer and organiser may tire you so much that you are unfit for your duties as hostess. Try not to let this happen. The best safeguard is planning—planning well in advance.

List your guests, trying to ensure that they will prove congenial; if a large party is planned check your seating accommodation, card tables, cutlery and crockery, making sure that you will have enough (your own, or borrowed) for your peace of mind and the comfort of your guests.

Have your invitations out well in advance. The planning of entertainment is fairly simple (if not, books to aid harassed hostesses can be procured) and should be decided early. Any necessary “properties,” such as cards, scorers, pencils, copies of competitions, apparatus for games, musical or elocutional performers, should be procured, or arranged for, at an early date.

Most hostesses' thoughts centre on supper. Plan your menu, and any extra dishes (or drinks) to be served during the evening. Write it out, check up again on necessary crockery, glasses, sweet-dishes, etc. List the food ingredients necessary.

Sweets (of the confectionery kind), drinks and some of the foodstuffs (e.g., meringues) can be arranged for days in advance. If cakes are to be bought, matters are much simplified, but the preparation of a home-cooked supper need not be irksome. Your ingredients are already in the house. Sponge cakes for trifles, biscuits and cakes that last well, can be made two or three days beforehand. Remember to lay in necessary stocks of tinned goods (fruits, asparagus, etc.). Have nuts ready shelled for cooking or decorating purposes.

Most of the cooking can be done the day before, leaving for the day itself a few special dishes, the arranging of savouries and the cutting of sandwiches (with bread bought ready sliced).

The household cleaning has, of course, also been planned, leaving little to do, except dusting and arranging of flowers, on the day of the party.

The unruffled hostess, who obviously enjoys her own party, is the one who has planned everything so well in advance that all the worries have been overcome before the day.