5 Simple Tips for a Stress Free Dinner Party

 Sponsored by Dr. Oetker

I love getting together with friends, especially having a “Girls Night In” with my girlfriends! Today, I’m happy to share some simple tips for hosting a stress free dinner party along with a fabulous giveaway to help you plan a fun night in with your friends!

When it comes to a party or simple dinner with friends, I’m all about making it easy! I used to go crazy with decorations and fancy recipes, but that just became too stressful and not fun at all. These days, I’m much less stressed and do things that are easy and fun for me as well as my guests.

I hope you enjoy these quick tips and the awesome giveaway!

1. Enjoy dinner yourself by serving something simple.

You don’t have to cook a five course meal to host a fabulous dinner party! I love to bake simple dishes to make dinner parties low stress.

As you know, I’ve been working with Ristorante Pizza and love serving their scrumptious pizza anytime I have friends come over. Not only is this pizza so easy to make, but it tastes like homemade! My latest favorite is their Mozzarella pizza with tomatoes, Edam cheese and a herbs that perfectly compliment the generous helping of cheese on top. Doesn’t this look delicious and oh so fancy? Nobody will know you didn’t make it from scratch:-)

Adding a fresh salad to something store-bought makes entertaining so much easier!

Slicing some goat cheese and placing it on toasted bread or crackers always makes a good presentation as well.

Check out the Ristorante Store Locator to find this brand of frozen pizza near you. 

2. Make a Beautiful Presentation with Items You Already Own

For easy wow factor, use a tablecloth and get out those fancy dishes, serving trays, napkins and glasses that you keep stored away. Simple white dishes and just one or two accent colors make a great tablescape.

Flowers and centerpieces should be short enough to talk over. I like getting inexpensive grocery store flowers or picking flowers from my garden and dividing them up into several small vases. Sometimes I use fancy glasses for my vases.

3. Have a Drink and Appetizer Station

Designate a table or counter space just for drinks and appetizers so people can help themselves. This gives you plenty of time to chat with friends and frees you to go back and forth to the kitchen to finish up things for dinner if needed. I like to put appetizers in areas I would like people to sit. Having food in that space insures they will congregate around that area of your home.

Break open the wine or sparkling cider. For some reason, drinking from fancy glasses is always so much more fun! Make sure to have extra wine, glasses and bottle openers out and ready to go when needed.

4. Have a Conversation Piece

A conversation piece can be a fancy dessert, beautiful centerpiece, fun napkins or silly wine glasses with goofy quotes on them. I often think about the conversation piece just as much as the food! My girlfriends and I love the Lolita wine glasses.

For my latest girl’s night in, I made spiked popsicles with my new ring popsicle molds! Now that is a conversation piece right? Ha!

To make these popsicles, I added a little bit of Pomegranate Vodka to some Pom Hula Juice. Yum!

5. End with a Delicious Dessert 

You want to give your guests a lasting impression with a fabulous dessert!

I’ve got a ton of great dessert recipes if you need a new idea for your next party. If you don’t want to cook, just pop over to your local bakery and get some yummy cupcakes. You can’t go wrong with cake!

Girls Night In Giveaway!

Now, thanks to Ristorante Pizza, you get a chance to win some great prizes to help you plan a fabulous Girls Night In Dinner Party! I’m giving away some accessories to take your Girls Night In to the next level and make the party planning process stress-free!

Here are the fun prizes you could win…

• Apples to Apples game
• What’s a Dame to do? game
• 12 Stemless White Wine Glasses from Crate & Barrel
• 12.5″ Platter from Crate & Barrel
• 2 Ristorante Coupons

Follow the directions on the widget to enter to win. Good Luck!

Another BIG Giveaway…

While you’re planning your summer parties, don’t forget to enter Ristorante’s Savor Your Summer Sweepstakes on Facebook with prizes valued at $1,500!

Enter for your chance to win a partial home makeover and to bring together just the right combination of food and people who are important to create a Perfect Night In.

Follow Dr. Oetker USA on Facebook to get more details.

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Dr. Oetker USA LLC. I received compensation for this post; however, all opinions stated are my own.

Originally published on July 10, 2014. Last Updated on May 15, 2021 by Amy Locurto