MIL gave me an entertaining journal for Christmas one year and I thought I'd share with you a longer version of what I'd write there - what went well, what didn't go so well and the menu.

Who: 44 people who work under DH
What: a real dinner, unlike the casual cookouts the group normally does
When: a Friday night from 7:00 to 11:00
Where: our own home
Why: to thank his employees for being such a great team

The Menu
Brown sugar-bourbon baked ham (11.6 lbs - 1/4 lb pp)
Beef tenderloin with mustard and herbs (10 lbs)

Gorgonzola broccoli casserole
Green beans with toasted hazelnut-lemon butter
Loaded baked potato casserole
Pear, walnut, blue cheese salad
Buttered corn
Veggie plate
Cheese & crackers

Harvest pear crisp
Gingerbread with lemon glaze
Chocolate dessert

Cider tea and sweet tea

Thoughts on the Menu
~ I knew beef tenderloin was expensive, but I didn't realize it was $6/lb.  Because I needed 10 lbs, I spent $60 just on that alone.  Lesson learned - save this expensive meat for smaller gatherings.  For comparison, ham is just $1.26/lb at our grocer.

~ Watch the dinner rolls you buy.  I had never seen these before, but they sell dinner rolls that are dough that you have to allow 3-6 hours to rise.  I bought these thinking they were simply the regular brown & serve I was familiar with.  Not so!  I am thoroughly thankful that I thought to make the rolls a day ahead of time and not wait until 30 mins before dinner to throw them in the oven.

~ I allowed 1/4 lb of meat per person and I wouldn't have needed more.  We even had about 65% men to 35% women, and you know the men ate more than the ladies, and we had exactly enough meat.

~ For the sides, I had leftovers coming out my ears.  I have no idea how I could have adjusted this.  I took the recipe's stated number of servings, say 6, and multiplied so I got somewhere near 50, in this case times 8 to get to 48.  This seems like it would have been a good approach, but I had pans and pans of sides left over.  Thankfully we left to visit family immediately after the party and gave the leftovers to them.

Thoughts on the General Party
~ God bless my help!  I hired our housekeepers for the night ($10/hr each) to help wash dishes and keep the food on the table hot and refilled.  I could NOT have done this without them!  I was able to be a lively, engaging hostess without worrying about the mechanics of the party.  I would have been a nutcase without them.  An hour before the party, when I told the girls to arrive, DH and I were still running around in our work clothes taking care of a million items.  Having them show up and being able to hand them final preparations so DH and I could go relax was invaluable.  The best part of the entire thing is that our house was spotless come 1 am when the last of the guests finally left.

~ I rented dishes and I'm glad I did.  I chose to get appetizer/salad/dessert plates in case, heaven forbid, I didn't allow enough food.  I felt the smaller plate would have kept people from loading down their plate and then not eating what they had taken.  This plan worked perfectly!  The dishes were only 30 cents each, so for $30 I had 100 plates.  I did well by the environment and I don't have to store the things!

~ I also chose to use real silverware (forks only) instead of plastic.  I borrowed some forks (along with several serving dishes) from MIL, but managed to come up with 50 forks between various sets of hand-me-down utensils.

~ Our community only recycles #1 and #2 plastic, so I bought #1 plastic cups.  Regular Solo cups are #5, so I actually spent a while in the cup aisle looking lol

~ I made my own flower arrangement quite inexpensively by cutting roadside foliage.  I filled in with grocery store flowers.

~ We divided up the house for different purposes and it really helped people to move around and mingle.  The bar was in the study, the food in the DR, seating in the LR and apps and beverages out on the patio.