Become the perfect host and learn how to foster community as an adult with this modern guide to hosting every type of gathering. In a world that often feels disconnected and transactional, there''s nothing more radically hospitable than welcoming people into your space, your table, and your life. In this accessible, inviting book on hosting and entertaining, author, CEO, and internet big sister Chelsea Fagan guides readers on creating moments worth staying in for. From designing the right space, to crafting a menu that won’t keep you in the kitchen all night, to revitalizing the lost art of cultivating grown-up communities, this book will make you the perfect host at every budget. Curating a space optimized for entertaining ,;so people can drop by without it sending you into a tailspin.;; A brief history of the cocktail hour --and its imagined future--including recipes with and without spirits.;;; The 101 tutorial for all things dinner parties : inviting guests, setting the table, planning a menu, creating a mood board, and actually enjoying the evening yourself.;; Facilitating a (platonic) adult sleepover --and why you definitely should! How to be good guest wherever you go , from when to show up, to what to bring, to what absolutely With chic, stylized photography and charming, illustrative line drawings throughout--providing everything from sample tablescapes to charcuterie board maps--and plenty of actual recipes for your next gathering, <Having People Over< will transform your relationship to entertaining, one apéritif at a time.

Autorentext
Chelsea Fagan is the CEO and co-founder of The Financial Diet, an author and a social media creator, and a home cook. She has published four books, I’m Only Here for the Wifi, The Financial Diet, A Perfect Vintage, and The High Dive.

Klappentext

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Become the perfect host and learn how to foster community as an adult with this modern guide to hosting every type of gathering.

In a world that often feels disconnected and transactional, there's nothing more radically hospitable than welcoming people into your space, your table, and your life.

In this accessible, inviting book on hosting and entertaining, author, CEO, and internet big sister Chelsea Fagan guides readers on creating moments worth staying in for. From designing the right space, to crafting a menu that won’t keep you in the kitchen all night, to revitalizing the lost art of cultivating grown-up communities, this book will make you the perfect host at every budget. Having People Over includes guides for:

• Curating a space optimized for entertaining, so people can drop by without it sending you into a tailspin.
• A brief history of the cocktail hour—and its imagined future—including recipes with and without spirits.
• The 101 tutorial for all things dinner parties: inviting guests, setting the table, planning a menu, creating a mood board, and actually enjoying the evening yourself.
• Facilitating a (platonic) adult sleepover—and why you definitely should!
• How to be good guest wherever you go, from when to show up, to what to bring, to what absolutely not to do.

With chic, stylized photography and charming, illustrative line drawings throughout—providing everything from sample tablescapes to charcuterie board maps—and plenty of actual recipes for your next gathering, Having People Over will transform your relationship to entertaining, one apéritif at a time.

Leseprobe
Introduction

Letter from Chelsea

Dear Hostess,

For as long as I can remember, my family’s house was the party house. More weekends than not, people gathered at our home for all kinds of celebrations: dinner parties, theme parties, poker parties, and countless other mini-events. As the guests began to arrive, my parents would implore my sister and me to greet them, maybe share a charming anecdote from school, before banishing us to their bedroom, where we’d enjoy the snacks and movie rental with which they’d bribed us. As long as we didn’t disturb anyone, we could stay up as late as we wanted, bouncing on the bed while the din of laughter wafted up toward us, eventually lulling us to sleep.

I remember the ritual of it: the days spent preparing dishes and decorations and the near-endless cleaning, even of spaces guests would never see. In some ways, our lives revolved around this constant expanding and contracting of our home, the buzzing promise of visitors turning our space into a kind of living entity. And life never felt more complete than when the house was full of lively music and the sound of people filling their plates.

My mother was always head chef and chair of the decorations committee in our home, with the rest of us following her vision (these days, my mother favors a subdued interior palette of creams, dark browns, and brass finishes). And to this day, my father is happy to play executive assistant. When you’re a guest in their home, he is still her biggest hype man, drawing your attention to something she did particularly well. “Isn’t that dip amazing?” he’ll say, handing you a drink perched on a cocktail napkin. “It was so hard not to eat the whole thing before you arrived.” Especially in the early days of my childhood, when money was very tight, my mother’s unique talent for making something of nothing wasn’t just what lit up their parties: It was what kept our lives from feeling as difficult as they actually were. We were often rolling quarters to pay the bills, but homemade food for parties and handmade costumes on Halloween made the limitations feel like creative exercises.

Although the spaces I’ve lived in through my own adult life share little with the homes I grew up in, I’m proud to say that I’ve kept the tradition of entertaining at the center of my solar system. In a given week, my husband Marc and I will host at least one gathering, and we’ve selected a group of friends who love to entertain as much as we do.

Don’t get me wrong: I relish a good restaurant or a night out dancing, the see-and-be-seen exhilaration of being in a crowd. But there is something so beautiful about welcoming people into your home, taking time to prepare an experience for them, and sharing the intimate, beautiful tedium of your life. Whether a raucous cocktail party that spans social groups or a cheeky grown-up slumber party with one of my favorite women, hosting is the center of my life.

Of course, even if there were no greater significance to the act of hosting, I would still love doing it: Having people over is incredibly fun. But I would argue that, in a culture that is increasingly estranged from itself, with communities fraying at the edges, gathering is an important act. We can get into the sociopolitical details later, but suffice it to say that bringing people together is one of the most powerful things we can do right now. We were meant to be a village, and that village was meant to gather in the home.

Rarely is this clearer to me than when I consider my relationship to those in my life with children. I decided long ago that parenthood was not for me—a choice that often results in people warning me of the dire lack of community I’ll experience as I age. But so far, I’ve found the opposite is true: I have plentiful energy to connect with the mothers in my life and delight in the opportunity to have kids around. Bringing new moms food and gift baskets, hosting them for casual gatherings where they’re welcome to bring the whole family, creating events where mothers and non-mothers alike can mingle at their own pace: I love being a part of the experience in my own small way…