We are hosting for the holidays this year! Are you?

My favorite thing these days is when I get to host our family for holidays. I miss having our kids all live in our home :( but it makes me happy when they are under our roof even if it’s for only a few days.

There are some things I’m doing right now to prepare so I thought I would share. I had a hosting question the other day on where we seat family and serve meals when our whole family is here so I thought I would answer that share what I’m doing (early!) to prepare.

Embroidered Thankful Garland // Gingham Cafe Curtains // Gold Curtain Rod // Gold rings

1. A New Tradition: The Thanksgiving Banner

Lately I’ve been thinking about more little traditions we can celebrate in Grammy’s House :) and ways to make each holiday and season special for our grandkids.

Right now both of our little ones are just two years old (and Courtney has one babe on the way!).

When my girls were little, we had simple traditions like a birthday banner, a “You Are Special” plate, Christmas mugs for their hot chocolate…a Cookies for Santa plate and other family traditions, too.

I love how even the simple things can become sweet memories!

My girls celebrated their babies’ first two birthdays by making special things to create memories for them. They are so creative!

I don’t have their DIY creative talent but finding a cute store bought banner we can hang for Thanksgiving every year is definitely in my skill set :). So as soon as I saw this embroidered garland, I knew I wanted it for this window in our kitchen. 🤎

Isn’t this adorable for Thanksgiving? I’m on hunt for banners for other occasions!

What little traditions do you have to make holidays or special memories your kids or grandkids?

I’d love ideas especially now that they are getting a little older, the options for what they can do are expanding!

2. Thinking through seating and tables

Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago how we seat everywhere when the whole family is here.

I just came up with a new plan for holiday tables and seating so I’ll share my idea, but I’ll also explain what we’ve done in the past.

Of course it has always depended on who is able to come when, and everyone hasn’t always been here all at the same time (and in the last couple of years with newborns and babies schedules it has sometimes made sitting all together at a table difficult ha!).

Before the babies when we lived in our Seattle home, we would add a long folding craft table almost to the end of our regular dining table so everyone could sit together (including my sister’s family when they were able to come). The extra table would go into our living room, kind of like the arrangement we have here!

Up until this year we’ve been able to squeeze around our regular dining table with people on the long dining bench and extra chairs plus we had a secondary table in our living room that we’ve been able to bring over for overflow. We also have counter stools which we have used a time or two in a pinch.

I somehow lost our long folding table in the move, so I thought this would be the year I’d replace it. But then I saw these beautiful (and affordable!) square folding wood game tables and thought this was an even better idea!

First of all, they are gorgeous! The low price at the time I purchased these just a few days ago made me wonder if they could be too good to be true but they are even better than I had hoped! They are solid wood, made in the USA, they have a lovely scalloped edge, and they come assembled. The folding legs are so easy to operate, too. And the table is slim enough when folded to fit just about anywhere if you want to store it.

I think I will like that they are square rather than long. In a smaller house you need a lot of flexibility.

We can seat four at each table (we bought two) so we could spread them out and make room for everyone, or we could set them end to end and near the regular table.

I like the idea of these tables to mix up groups maybe for different meals, or dinner and dessert, to give everyone a chance to catch up with different siblings or cousins, too.

And, you could even use one for a fun date night for two or a puzzle or game night by the fire! I’m ALWAYS cold in the winter and love to sit by the fire.

I will have to experiment, they just arrived so I haven’t tested it all out yet but I’ll let you know what we decide to do!

We think we’ll keep our table and chairs in our front closet so they can be protected and close to pull out, but they are so pretty I am tempted to keep at least one of them set up in the Snug for little projects, puzzles or games upstairs when we don’t need them for holiday meals!

I still can’t get over how affordable they are for such lovely tables.

I also ordered four folding bamboo chairs that should arrive this week. I may decided I need another set, but we do have other folding chairs and extra chairs around so I’m going to wait and see if we actually need more or not. We have such little space for storage I don’t want to end up with too many chairs.

These are the folding game card tables we ordered.

And these are the bamboo folding chairs.

3. Thinking Through Table Setting Ideas

Did I need more salt and pepper shakers? No. But I had a gift card and couldn’t resist these. They are darling, so I can’t wait to see them on our Thanksgiving table! And actually now that we have the two small new tables, I’m actually glad I bought these. They are the perfect size! I wish I had another set for the other small table ha!

Do you plan out how you’ll set your tables in advance? I usually prepare ahead of time, at least somewhat, but sometimes I’ve had to wing setting the table at the last minute. It all works out!

But since we got the smaller tables this week, I am going to be thinking it all over a bit more so I can be prepared. I’ll think about what will fit on each of the new tables as far as dishes and serving pieces and whether I should use placemats or maybe on small tables I need tablecloths?

4. Food + Menu Planning

Even though preparing food really isn’t my passion, people like to eat when they come for holidays. :) And I want them to enjoy coming home so we do our best ha! In our family we have all kinds of diets from vegan to gluten free to dairy free so it takes some thought and advanced planning.

We all try to eat pretty healthy but we all have certain things we like or look forward to around the holidays, whether it’s a special coffee drink, a dessert or a meal, so some of it we make together, some we handle separately.

One thing I’ve done the past few years for Thanksgiving is order our turkey prepared from Whole Foods. They put out their holiday meal options usually by the end of October if you want to order ahead. They have had really good quality turkey, it was so delicious and worked out great for us! Since not everyone in our family eats the turkey we just get one and then we can focus on preparing other dishes. Last year we ordered a smaller turkey also from Whole Foods and cooked it ourselves, and that worked out too!

Once I have a final count on who will be here for Thanksgiving, I will make a list and order what we need. We generally make very simple dishes, so once we decide what everyone will eat, it’s not too complicated to prepare and everyone can pitch in so we divide and conquer! We mostly just stick to the classics, so nothing too complex.

The trickiest part is just deciding what we need to heat up dishes. We always use a variety of crockpots and slow cookers, which I’m glad I’m thinking of this in advance because I need to replace ours…it stopped working! I haven’t decided what I’ll get yet so I’ll report back on what I decide.

This fall we bought a very small extra oven though which we LOVE and.sometimes use more than our regular oven day to day, so I’m sure it’ll come in handy for small dishes around the holidays.

5. Preparing and Making Room for Overnight Guests

While I’m sometimes a little envious of people who have a big family home with lots of guest bedrooms, we really don’t regret intentionally downsizing. In fact, we are still really happy that we did. Most of the year it’s just the two of us here and my parents in their Tiny Cottage or just one of our kids or families is here for a few days, so we don’t need more room.

We just get creative once or twice a year when we have more people staying with us.

You might have seen that we’ve rearranged the Snug to be more of a family guest room (take a tour of the Snug here) so we’ll definitely put that to use! I’m feeling definitely more prepared as far as beds this year.

Sometimes if my sister’s family is coming here along with our all of kids, her family will stay in a hotel a few minutes away. I think that can be nice sometimes to be able to go have a little vacay overnight and have your own room and bathroom and just come back the next day!

And our daughter Courtney and her family have their lake house where people can stay, too. It’s an hour from us though so we all usually just stay here!

Everyone who needs a place to stay seems to find a spot, so I just give everyone options in advance where they can sleep and they can decide what works best for them.

Some future holiday my husband and I may even give up our room and stay down the road, so that way all of our kids can stay together in the house and we’ll show up after they make breakfast :).

Our toddler grandson slept over at our house last week in our daybed (his first night in a big boy bed)! He loved it. I got these bed bumpers to help keep him cozy in bed and they worked great. We used to have those awkward bed railings for our kids when they were still little enough to fall out of bed so these are much better.

6. Preparing and organizing all the things

I’ve been continuing my organizing mission in general around the house and will continue leading up to the holidays!

I do this mostly for us and not just guests or hosting, but everything we tidy or move out of the house helps make room for all the things we want to do.

And there are certain things I like to think through in advance of hosting, like making sure we have enough fresh pillows, bedding, towels, etc. And of course, all the gift buying and wrapping, too! It gets to be a lot at the last minute if you don’t start early.

As far as cleaning and preparing the house itself, as well as thinking ahead to the holidays, we’ve actually been doing a weekly home prep challenge in The HomeBody House. That’s been helpful to keep me on task to do a little bit each week, one room at a time. Next week we’re working on simple tasks for a bedroom or guest room so I will definitely make progress then.

Last week I got inspired for an idea in our primary closet that is actually going to help with hostingI I ordered these shelf covers to go over our wire shelving (I got them just a bit deeper than the existing shelves) and I plan to use them for extra quilts and pillows.

That’s the one challenging thing about having a smaller home and wanting to host people especially during the winter holidays, trying to find places to put all of the bulkier winter quilts and things like extra pillows pillows! I’ll report back when I get that storage area set up to show you what I’m doing!

What are you working on to prepare for the holidays?

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