Progressive Dinner Party

I'm all for a good dinner party. There are several ways you can approach having dinner with your friends: 1. Cook the entire thing yourself, which would involve a lot of work, and sometimes a lot of money, but can be extremely rewarding 2. The good ol' pot luck, and have everyone bring a dish to share 3. A progressive dinner. 

Progressive dinners are a super fun, and different way to share a meal with several other families.

Assign each family participating in the dinner a course of the meal: it's best to do this with 3-4 families. Each family has to prepare their course and get their house ready for guests. Your meal could look as follows:

Family 1: Appetizers

Family 2: Main Course

Family 3: Dessert

Family 4: Drinks and Games

Now the fun begins! All people involved will meet up at family number one's home for appetizers - from there, you all hop in your cars and head over to family number two's house for your main course - when dinner is done, go to family number three's house for dessert and then four for drinks and games. If small children are involved, it's up to the host of each course to provide entertainment for the kids as well. Busy kids are happy kids.

There are several things great about this fun dinner party. Everyone gets a chance to entertain without having to spend mass amounts of time and money to do so. You get a chance to relax at someone else's house and get different ideas for food, decorating, and entertaining. There is space between courses of your meal to let food settle and digest so you actually end up feeling better and eating less.

Mix it up, if your first go is successful. The next time you go around, give everyone a different assignment so they have a chance to shine with a different meal course. And,most importantly, relax and have fun being with friends!

This also makes a GREAT date night when done with other couples, each one shipping the kids off to grandma's house, or slumber parties at their friends.