I'm an Organizing Junkie » Teaching the world how to enjoy life one pile of clutter at a time.

Organizing a Fun & Simple Fondue Party

November 20, 2009 – 10:32 am

Last week I hosted a Ladies Fondue Party. It was informal, simple and fun, fun, fun.

Nothing says simple like inviting guests over to dinner and asking them to cook their own food….my kind of entertaining! :)

My friend Sandy over at Reluctant Entertainer has been such an inspiration to me over the last couple of years. She has taught me that entertaining is more about the people than the perfection of the event. I’ve been able to let go of so many hang ups that stopped me from truly enjoying having guests over. It just doesn’t matter if things go wrong. I expect it now and embrace the Plan B. No one really cares unless of course the host is totally stressing out and making everyone feel uncomfortable. Awkward. Don’t do that.

People over perfection.

I sent casual email invites to about 12 ladies. I made sure to mention that it would be a potluck fondue and that as soon as I knew the number of attendees I would get back to them with what to bring. I asked them to RSVP by a certain date. Email makes it really easy for people to send a quick response and believe it or not but I’d heard from everyone by the next day. Once I knew how many guests were coming (8) I sent a second email listing the food needed and asked them to hit “reply all” to let everyone know what they’d be bringing. First reply, first choice.

Here was the list:

Steak cubed (3), baguettes sliced (2 or 3), variety of veggies parboiled, potatoes cubed and parboiled, cheese cubed for cheese sauce, chocolate for dessert fondue, cake cubed (angel food or pound holds up best), variety of sliced fruit.

Eight items, eight guests. After I’d heard back from everyone (one or two might not have said and I just went ahead and designated for them) I sent a finale email with a completed list of who was bringing what so everyone was on the same page.

The night of the fondue all I had to do was prepare the table and the drink station and we were set to go. It just doesn’t get any easier than that. My guideline is one fondue pot of oil for every 4 people. It just gets too crowded in a pot otherwise. I use an electric fondue pot in the middle for the cheese. As far as I’m concerned it’s all about the cheese. And the bread. The bread smothered in cheese. Mmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmm!

I decided to go with a Hawaiian theme and incorporate some bright colors to the table. Did it matter that my red fondue pots clashed with the bright pinks and oranges. Nope not to me.

I added a ladel to the cheese so guests could just scoop out a whole big bunch of it right onto their plates. Did I mention how much I love the cheese?

Did it matter that all the forks didn’t match? Nope not to me.

A few years back one of the girls made sweet napkins for me out of some very cute Hawaiian fabric. I pulled them out of my Hawaiian stash and put them to use again.

Another girlfriend did the place card holders. Aren’t they cute? Dollar store shot glasses filled with smarties. I love that she added our Hawaiian name. So inexpensive and fun!

The drink station. Nothing fancy, well except for the coconut cups. These are some serious cuteness and a bit of a splurge a fews ago from Ebay. I got married in Hawaii, I can’t help myself :) The punch I made up ahead of time and it consisted of Malibu, pineapple juice, cranberry juice and sprite.

One of the best parts of the evening was the new rule I made up. If you dropped a piece of food off your fork in the pot you had to answer a question. Normally I make my guests sing but I found this super fun question pack over at Meckmom’s Etsy Shop for only $5.95 and I just couldn’t resist. What a great addition to the meal. Fondue’s are meant to be enjoyed slowly over a couple of hours so having these fun questions handy really added to the party!

Now remember I mentioned Plan B. I had to go there numerous times during the course of the evening. My hubbie had switched to the fondue gel instead of the oil we normally use and for whatever reason it takes much longer to heat up the oil this way. We all sat there drooling over the yummy food we couldn’t yet cook. We ended up dumping the oil into a big pot and heating it up on the stove first. I don’t normally have to do this with the oil.

The chocolate fondue is not a specialty of mine and I had forgotten to get some instruction on how to do this ahead of time. So I just melted the chocolate on the stove but through a comedy of errors we realized that overheating chocolate is a very bad thing. Plan B saw us having to dump the first batch of chocolate (the horror!) and start again. What can you do, you just have to laugh about these things.

Overall it was a wonderful evening filled with good food and good friends. It was simple, everyone contributed and a great time was had by all. I think Sandy would be proud :)

Cheers!

Do you fondue?

By Laura | Posted in My Life, Organizing | Comments (5)

Kraft Foods Gift Basket Giveaway

November 19, 2009 – 8:24 am

Any other basket lovers out there? How about food lovers? The giveaway going on over at my review site includes both!

GO HERE TO ENTER

By Laura | Posted in Product Reviews | Comments (0)

Holiday help and other great posts

November 18, 2009 – 9:56 am

It’s time for me to get link happy again with some excellent posts I’ve read over the past couple of weeks. And while a few of them offer some excellent holiday help I’d like to also just pause for a quick moment to offer you a different bit of holiday encouragement as we lead into the Christmas season. Ladies please hear me. Slow down. Whatever you are planning, however many pages your list may be, do yourself a favor and scratch something off that list right now. Believe me, I’m talking to myself here as well.

The holiday season won’t be as much work if you have less gifts to buy, less cards to mail, less parties to attend and less decorating to do. That might sound Scrooge like to some but what I replace my time with is so precious to me. Relaxing at home with my family, playing board games, watching movies, singing Christmas carols. What’s important to you? Slow down, simplify, relax. The days will pass regardless of how stressed we are so why not go through this holiday season wearing a different attitude. Either way you’ll get to the other side. How do you want to remember the journey?

image courtesy of don2g

Slow down. Simplify. Relax.

And enjoy these links :)

Free Digital Taste of Home Cookbooks ~ including some for Thanksgiving

Printable Christmas Planner ~ @ Executive Homemaker

Organize for Thanksgiving by Labeling Your Serving Platters ~ @ Complete Organizing Solutions

Gifts You Can Make: Homemade Bath Salts and Soaks ~ @ Momadvice

Cultivating a Meek And Quiet Spirt ~ @ A Woman Inspired

Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering ~ @ The Happiness Project

The Lost Rule of Organizing ~ @ Small Notebook

A Peaceful Home – Be Home ~ @ Purely His

What To Do When You Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything ~ @ Serene Journey

Inconvenient Gratitude ~ @ (In)Courage (this post was particularly touching to me as we journey through our current circumstances)

Carrying Burdens That Don’t Belong To Us ~ @ Keeper of the Home

By Laura | Posted in Link Love, Motivation | Comments (8)

Teaching Kids Responsibility

November 16, 2009 – 7:21 pm

I’ve talked in the past about how important I think it is to teach kids responsibility through regular household duties. Two specific posts of mine are:

Responsibility Chore Charts

We are not our children’s slaves

Today I’m welcoming guest poster, Katie from Kitchen Stewardship who is contributing to this discussion with a great idea for encouraging responsibility and good organizational habits in our kids. Welcome Katie!

Sometimes I wonder if organizational skills are genetic. If they are, God help my poor kids! Wouldn’t you love it if your kids turn out more organized than you? I’m always looking for ways to pass on (ahem – help create) good organizational skills for my kids.

If you’re tired of cleaning up after your kids and finding field trip notes stuffed in the bottom of the backpack, read on!

Teach children to be responsible for themselves:

I had the great blessing of working with some really extraordinary parents in my two years of teaching. One of them shared this fabulous idea for “earning” TV time and cultivating the habit of responsibility. Her kids’ daily responsibilities included four come-home-from-school tasks:

Change into play clothes.
Empty backpack and put lunchbox on counter (for older kids: unpack lunchbox with or without mom).
Complete homework.
Read 15 minutes.

image courtesy of mwesigwa

As an incentive Mom typed the required tasks onto a piece of paper along with this:

15 15 15 15

For each task completed, the child “earned” 15 minutes of TV or “screen” time, shown by a “15″ being circled or marked off. You could also use poker chips for each 15-minute increment. (*Screen time includes computer and video games.)

Benefits:

Responsible organizational habits and routine
Immediate incentive
TV is a privilege, not a right
Paper makes system clear, hopefully fewer battles
Reward is not a sweet
Priorities first

Certainly for some families who might not allow television at all, TV wouldn’t be a proper incentive, but if you allow your kids to watch any television, you may as well make them earn it.

Bonus for Mommies of Preschoolers

If your child doesn’t yet go to school, there are still steps you can take to form an organized mind. Start teaching organization young by teaching kids how to sort into categories, an important skill they’ll learn in preschool.

Laura, please pay no attention to the utter chaos that is my countertop!!!

Here are some developmentally appropriate examples of chores for the 2-to-4-year-old age group that you might use if you want to adapt the TV incentive:

Unloading the dishwasher. My son has been unloading the utensils from the dishwasher since he was 2 ½ years old. Watch for sharp knives!
Putting away toys/games when finished with them. Try to label boxes/tubs/drawers with pictures and words so even the littlest children (and visitors to your home) know where everything goes.
Putting PJs under their pillow.
Feeding fish.
Clearing dishes from the table. Learning to carry plates carefully teaches caution and respect for objects.
Folding small items like washcloths and hand towels. Do teach the proper way to fold; this will take longer the first few times, but then you can delegate the task entirely.

Even the littlest ones can do SOMEthing if you’re willing to take the time to let them help.

Visit Katie at Kitchen Stewardship, where she focuses on Baby Steps to balancing nutrition, the environment, time, and money through the eyes of faith. You’ll find weekly “Monday Missions” to challenge you to make one positive change in your kitchen each week, with supporting recipes and tips to help make it happen.

Check out some of Katie’s other posts:

Packing a Healthy Lunch

Packing a Reduced Waste Lunch

By Laura | Posted in Guest Bloggers, Kid Stuff | Comments (21)

MPM ~ Nov 16th + Thanksgiving Table Decor

November 15, 2009 – 7:59 pm

Hello everyone! I’ve got a fabulous new banner to bring in this Thanksgiving holiday season with for those living in the US. As you know here in Canada we celebrated Thanksgiving last month but I wanted to honor all my friends on the other side of the border. How this banner came to be has such a great story of giving behind it that I just have to share it with you. A couple of weeks ago I was cruising around blogland and stumbled across a lovely blog called Good, True and Beautiful and this post titled 30 Days of Giving. I discovered that Sharon is participating in Keeping the Kingdom First’s 30 Day Giving Challenge by giving away 30 blog buttons. I quickly left a comment and waited to see if I had made the list and was thrilled when I did. The result is the beautiful button above. I absolutely love it and a big thanks goes out to Sharon for donating of her time so generously to bless others like that.

So now on to last week’s recipe highlight. I just can’t recommend the Bake Chicken and Acorn Squash enough. It has been a Family Favorite for awhile now and it is SO good! I used all chicken thighs for mine.

The best part of any holiday meal for me is decorating the table. I really enjoy doing it and I love that it totally distracts from the meal (in my case that can often be a good thing :) ) I get most of my supplies from the dollar store and just get creative with it. My Thanksgiving napkin rings this year were simply cardboard leaves (from the dollar store) hole punched with a pipe cleaner put through to secure around the napkin. So easy but boy did they pop on the table.

For more inspiration, here are some other great ideas for table decor:

Candy Cups for the Thanksgiving table ~ @ Makes and Takes

Free Thanksgiving placecard printable ~ @ WM[squared] Designs

More Thanksgiving free printables ~ @ Living Locurto

DIY Beautiful Napkin Rings and Ornaments ~ @ Ribbonwood Cottage

I can’t wait to try a few of those myself!

Here is our menu for the week:

Monday: Two-Meat Spaghetti Sauce (new)

Tuesday: Crockpot Chicken Thighs (new) with rice and broccoli

Wednesday: Teriyaki Tenderloin (new) served with french fries and carrots

Thursday: Leftover buffet

Friday: Homemade Pizza

Saturday: Potato Carrot Soup with Goldfish Croutons (new) served with fresh homemade bread (bread machine)

Simple Supper Sunday

WHAT’S ON YOUR MENU THIS WEEK?

Menu Plan Monday guidelines and banner selections are here.

By Laura | Posted in Menu Plan Monday | Comments (30)

3M Picture Hanging Strips

November 12, 2009 – 9:47 pm

A couple of months ago I did a review on the 3M Command Hooks that I absolutely adore. A couple of my readers asked if I use them to hang my calendars that I have all over my house. Why of course I do! They are perfect for people like me who love to change their minds on a regular basis :)

Earlier this year my girlfriend got a new stainless steel fridge and realized that she wouldn’t be able to hang her magnetic calendar back up on the front of it as she did with her old fridge. Did you know stainless steel fridges aren’t magnetic? I totally had no clue. Anyway she needed to come up with a solution to fix this little problem and of course didn’t want to use anything permanent that might wreck her gorgeous new fridge.

That’s where 3M Command Picture Hanging Stripscame in to play.

These are basically velcro strips, with the same removable backing that the Command hooks use, designed to securely and easily hang pictures on the wall. And guess what? They also worked great for hanging my girlfriend’s calendar on the fridge. I love it when a plan comes together!

Let’s take a look. Sorry about the picture quality…it’s very hard to take pictures of stainless steel…oh the glare, the glare!

The white bits are the strips on and ready to go. One part of the strip goes on the fridge, the other part goes on the actual calendar and then you connect them both together. It’s so romantic :)

Up close and personal.

Ahh all better.

By Laura | Posted in Organizing Solutions | Comments (31)

Molly’s Money-Saving Digest Giveaway

November 11, 2009 – 10:15 pm

It’s time for another giveaway.

Go here to enter

By Laura | Posted in Product Reviews | Comments (1)

I’ve been thinking…

November 10, 2009 – 9:58 pm

So many thoughts swirling around this big head of mine so I thought I’d just go hog wild and do some brain dumping right here on the blog. You know, with people that can’t walk away from me when I’m talking. Okay well technically you can but I can’t see you so I’ll think you’re still here. You are here, aren’t you? Hello? Hello?

Is it wrong for a grown woman to cry when she no longer has cable? I mean really it’s only been a day and I am seriously going through withdrawals. I watched the clock every couple of minutes the entire time I knew Dancing with the Stars was on and then this morning I couldn’t help but wonder if Regis and Kelly were missing me. I’m sure they are just as devastated as I am (don’t you burst my bubble!). And the shakes, please, it’s so pathetic. Can we say addicted much. Good grief! To be truthful though I’m secretly relieved to have had this decision made for me in the wake of my husbands impending job loss. I don’t think I would have had the strength to do it on my own and obviously that big black box in my living room has more of a hold on me than I even realized. I have a feeling this change in my life will be huge.

If you are hanging around my blog these days you may come across a lot of links that are crossed out like this. I had a new super cool plugin installed on my blog that kindly points out all my broken links by doing this with them. I am working my way through fixing them bit by bit but just wanted to tell you so you didn’t think I’d gone all crossed out crazy on ya for no apparent reason except maybe to drive you nutso. Now would I do that to you? Don’t answer that.

image courtesy of jonk

Isn’t that picture awesome? Wouldn’t it be great to really see that in the sky out of the blue one day. It would just tickle me silly.

So I’m very excited that I’m an Organizing Junkie has over 500 fans now on Facebook. Just past the 500 mark today I think. Anyhoo wasn’t sure if everyone was even aware I had a Facebook Fan Page. It still annoys me that I can’t get my links to appear in my sidebar or a links tab to appear across the top but despite that I do hang out over there once and awhile and would love to have you join me.

Speaking of my blog…I’m the type of girl that gets bored easily, that likes to re-arrange rooms and containers and freshen things up on a regular basis. And while I absolutely love my current blog design, I’ve now had this same look for two years. TWO YEARS! I’d change it myself but well I have no clue how..lol. I’ve been thinking about a blog re-do for forever but here’s the thing. I’m terrible to work with. No really I am because you see I’m a visual girl that can’t quite make up her mind on what I want until I see it. And you know what that means don’t you…a lot of work for well whoever is helping me. I wouldn’t even want to work with me! Just ask my hubbie how annoying I am when I ask him to move the furniture around just so I can change my mind when I see it and have him put it all back. Oops. So when it comes to describing to someone what I want…well I just don’t know. I’m so helpful like that. I know I want change, a new look, perhaps even a new Wordpress theme but really that’s probably not quite enough information to give someone..lol. I have no idea why I just told you all that but hang in there with me. I’m sure I’ll figure something out soon :)

Okay gotta go, I’m working on a very cool Christmas ornament this year that I can’t wait to tell you about. Well that is if they turn out. In my head they look awesome but we’ll see how that translates in real life. Wish me luck!

So what’s new with you?

By Laura | Posted in Misc, My Life | Comments (63)

Menu Plan Monday ~ Nov 9th

November 8, 2009 – 8:00 pm

Hi everyone! Hope you are all doing well and ready to get menu planning for an organized week!

So my recipe highlight of last week definitely goes to the slow cooked Rotisserie-Style Chicken. This recipe was so easy to prepare in the slow cooker and my hubbie gave it a 9 out of 10 for taste! I say wow to that because he’s a tough critic. The Makeover Creamy Italian Sausage Pasta recipe was also very good and easy to prepare. I’ll definitely be adding both recipes to our Family Favorite Recipe Index.

Unfortunately I wasn’t a huge fan of the Oven Chicken Fingers though, they just weren’t crispy enough for me. I’m going to keep experimenting with recipes on this one.

On my baking list this week is Kristi’s Famous Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. How about you? Baking anything special this week? Feel free to share your recipe link in the comments.

So here is what’s on our dinner menu:

Monday: Chicken Tortellini Soup (using homemade broth from last week’s chicken)

Tuesday: Slow Cooker French Dip (new)

Wednesday: Baked Chicken and Acorn Squash (family favorite)

Thursday: Leftover buffet

Friday: Baked Ziti with Spinach and Sausage (new)

Saturday: I’m hosting a ladies fondue party! (will post pictures next week)

Simple Supper Sunday

WHAT’S ON YOUR MENU THIS WEEK?

Menu Plan Monday guidelines and banner selections are here.

By Laura | Posted in Menu Plan Monday | Comments (45)

Planning for the holidays

November 7, 2009 – 10:08 am

I’m over at BlogHer today discussing how to get organized for the holidays with a little advance planning. A stress-free holiday is totally possible, find out how I do it over here.