I’ve always loved parties. If people will be there and food is involved, I’m all about it!

I’m a planner at heart. Events, gatherings, anything where people get together for a central purpose, I’m kind of obsessed with mapping it out.

It used to drive my family crazy, but they’re used to me now. Even my girls are big planners now and are now masters themselves at arranging a well thought out event.

I think the first event I remember helping with was a party one of my friends from high school had at her house. I didn’t know her that well, we were in classes together, but I knew we were having some food, parents were involved, we would be dancing in their garage, and I figured: I bet she needs help. (I mean, if I were having a party like this, I would want help?) So, I offered to go over early and help set up before our friends came over.

Later in college, I learned more about planning for gatherings where crowds were involved, what to do and how to do it, from my mother-in-law. She was a legend at planning a meal, setting it out for a long line of friends, family or college kids, hungry for a home-cooked meal. I can still see her now, last one to eat, leaning on the counter, exhausted from the work unbeknownst to her guests, but reveling in the people who smiled and laughed around her table.

Thru the years I learned a lot about myself through the art of planning ahead, (which was perfect for my insatiable appetite to see into the future and know what to expect) but that’s another story.

I learned more about what meals were conducive to the type of gathering and the guests or honestly what was just plain easy to put together ahead of time. What menu items were good especially if you were on a tight budget was a crucial aspect of any gathering. And if you know us Texans…the bigger the better - the more the merrier has always been our motto.

And when the kids asked, ‘can so-and-so come over too?’, our standard replay was ‘of course’. To be the house where your children’s friends gathered was a dream and one I cherished and the specific reason we designed the home they grew up in as we did.

*Gathering people I love and want to know better is my jam!*

In preparation of any event, I look at multiple factors, some include:

what the flow of the traffic in the house would be
where do people line up, is this a sit-down affair
what would best serve the people that would be in attendance, (i.e. would there be senior adults with specific needs for sitting, verses children with additional needs.)
Is there a good place to trash?
A spoon rest for mixing coffee?
A little container to put their torn off sweetener trash in?
The devil is in the details! And all of those factors play into planning for any event and how to serve your guests best.

After graduation from Texas Tech University and getting married four months later, I took at job at a large care dealership in Dallas, Sewell Village Cadillac, where I worked while I finished my teacher certification classes. One of my jobs as the Service Secretary, where I was one of a literal handful of women in the Service, Parts and Body Shop, was to plan the company picnic each year. Bringing 1000+ people together on a business level was different, but the ‘same’ at the same time. There would be people, food, a location and an activity.

Later, as I became a mother, the criteria for a great party, never really changed when birthday parties, baby showers galore, Christmas and Easter family gatherings became the new normal. They were people I knew and loved, who I could serve and a replicating this ‘plan’ always helped it go off with a limited number of hitches. And that’s the markings of a great event.

No surprises, plenty to eat, good conversation and lots of fun.

After years of planning parties, I see the hospitality bug as the gift it is. A gift straight from God. And the use of that gift is a gift back to the God I serve. Sharing a meal, conversation or meeting new friends over a bowl of spaghetti or chips and queso was just as meaningful to me as a well-planned and perfectly executed meal. I’m no chef and rarely cook complicated dishes. For me, ‘it’s about the people’, as so perfectly said by, Mr. Farnon, the lead vet in the show ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ (a favorite show of mine and the hubs).

And the simpler and more streamline, I can make the process, the more time I can spend with people Iove and hope to serve, if that doesn’t sound too cheesy.

Each time I gather with people I love (or even just like and want to get to know better) I pray my service of them reminds me of Christ who came to serve and our responsibility to steward any gift he has given us in a way that we can honor him. Just as John chapter 13 describes Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, Christ came to serve and so for the Christ-follower, so should we.

“Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:28