Parties & Celebrations: Expert Guides and Resources

Even the cook should get to enjoy a stress-free Thanksgiving. So, if you're hosting this year's holiday festivities, follow these tips to help take the stress out of getting ready to cook a Thanksgiving meal: ©Lordn / Adobe Stock Make a plan: Poor planning is probably the greatest stressor when you're trying to execute a large meal, particularly Thanksgiving dinner.

You’ve worked hard deciding what foods to serve on Thanksgiving and have chosen the finest ingredients. On Thanksgiving Day, why not create some visual impact with the food you’re going to serve? Try these following tips for adding flair to your Thanksgiving table. ©Evgenyb / Adobe Stock Make your own dip bowls: When serving a vegetable tray with dip, try making a bowl out of a red, yellow, or green bell pepper.

If you are serving dinner to a Thanksgiving crowd you will need to include room in your budget for drinks. Plan on offering hot and cold drinks, decide whether you will serve alcoholic beverages, and always be sure to offer water. Also, don’t forget to have plenty of ice on hand. ©Mark Stout / iStockphoto.comWhen serving soft drinks, it’s important when planning your menu and looking at your budget to decide whether to serve them from cans or 2-liter plastic bottles.

Do you want to socialize with friends and family while spending as little money as possible? Your guests will appreciate the quality time together as well as the frugality of these events. Here are a few ideas that are proven winners: Covered-dish dinners: Hosts provide the main course, and guests bring side dishes and desserts.

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd can be expensive, so it’s important that you start out with a firm look at your budget. If you’re the one making Thanksgiving dinner, ask yourself the following questions: How much can you spend? You may be thinking goose or duck, when your budget calls for turkey. What are the ages of the guests you’ll be cooking for?

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a big endeavor, but you can take a lot of the stress out of the holiday by preparing some foods in advance. Take some time to go over your menu and determine which dishes you can make ahead of time. Read on to see suggestions for tasks you can perform before the big day arrives. ©Thomas John / Unsplash.

Cooking for a crowd on Thanksgiving is always a little stressful. But with a little planning, your Thanksgiving dinner will arrive on the table without incident. Keep these tips in mind to run a smooth kitchen, which is especially important for a big holiday meal: Check what you need before you start cooking: Nothing is worse for a cook than being halfway through a recipe and realizing that you’re out of a key ingredient.

You've committed to having a large group of friends and family over for a meal — but now what? The hardest part about cooking for a crowd is figuring out how much to cook. The quantity you make depends on how many people you're serving, of course, and whether appetizers are pre-meal goodies or the main attraction.

An inexpensive way to decorate your table for a special occasion is to make fancy folded napkins. Crisply starched napkins or weighty paper dinner napkins that are folded in interesting shapes bring art to the setting and can accentuate a dinner table with style.Fancy napkin folding is not as difficult as it looks, and the creative table dressing is an additional way to impress your dinner party guests!