Ideas for Hosting the Perfect Weekend Brunch: Menu and More
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The Best Weekend Brunch Ever!
After all the rigmarole of the busy and packed work week, the weekend is the time to let loose, call home a few friends and family, and get together in the day for a lively and joyous gathering with your near and dear ones over a nice meal, some great beverages, entertainment and some friendly chatter in the best company of your choice. The weekend brunch is a great way to relax and connect with your favorite people in the comfort of your home with a great menu to go along with the affair making it a comforting event and one to look forward to.
When you are hosting, it falls upon your shoulders to rise up to the occasion and prove what a great host you really are, not just by how well turned out your home and lawn is, but also by the great menu you have to offer to your guests and the entire ambience and vibe that you manage to create for them. Planning is a significant part of pulling this off so make sure that you have all your tasks for the event jotted down firmly in place before you move on to the execution part of it. We at ChameleonJohn have some great ideas for you to carry off the best weekend brunch ever!
Prepare Well – Guest List, Space, Venue, and Spatial Arrangement
When you plan to have people over this weekend or the next for brunch the planning, organization, and implementation part of things-to-do can get a bit overwhelming so it is best to go at a time-bound but leisurely pace. First things first, you will need to have a guest list and figure out how big or small an event you want to have. Though there is no limitation to the number of guests except the space you have available, it is best to go with a moderate number of about five to seven couples with children and maybe a few family members too. If it is going to be just couples then you can hike the number up a bit.
If you want to have more people over then you need to let the space define the number. Speaking of space, you can have the venue indoors or outside your home in the lawns, garden, front yard, or backyard as per your preference. You can hire a Gazebo from Pop-Up party rentals and have your guests indulge in a garden party that they’ll remember forever. Once decided, you will need to organize the furniture in such a way that the area looks spacious and beautiful. So go ahead and organize the seating all around a few joined tables under a gorgeous table cloth and place bunches of multicolored floral arrangements tastefully in vases at various points in the room or garden. For the furniture and furnishings, pastel shades work best.
Some Finer Nuances – Kid’s Area, Music, & Dress Code
If children are going to be a part of your guest group then do make sure that you have a separate kid’s area for the children who are old enough to play without full time supervision. Have kid’s furniture, art materials and toys all ready for them when they arrive so that they are happy and occupied, allowing the grownups to engage in conversation as they please. It would also be a good idea to have some dulcet music playing at adequate but not too loud volume. You can have a selection of music tracks and CDs ready for your guests to choose from and switch amongst if they feel like, by popular demand. This is a win-win idea as music always adds good vibrations and joy to the atmosphere.
Music, children, venue, and setting apart we come to the attire for you and your guests. You can have a dress code if you like, to up the fun quotient using various themes like color-oriented clothes (blue and red, etc.), or movie characters. Kids especially will love this angle and have great fun with it. Of course, you don’t want it to feel like Halloween, so stick to sober themes. If you are not having a dress code for your weekend brunch then you can stick to wearing bright colors to set off the warm sunlight. These colors will work even in the thick of winter by contrasting the snow and the grey skies.
What to Serve & How to Serve
Brunch is a portmanteau of the two words for meals – breakfast and lunch. It is normally eaten between late morning to mid-afternoon, roughly from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. And finally, to pull off this social event you will need to come to the main part of hosting it – the menu. The most fun of the brunch is in the eating so make sure you have a variety of dishes and beverages to offer. The key is to have all kinds of delicious tastes and flavors, hot and cold, on the menu. You’ll also need to decide whether you are going to cook entirely yourself, have the event catered for, order food from a store beforehand, or go in for a bit of everything.
Decide according to the options available as you can even buy and refrigerate all the menu items the night before the big day. If you are inviting vegetarians then make sure you demarcate the food into vegetarian and non-vegetarian areas. Also, for greater convenience, go for a buffet style of serving so that your guests enjoy the occasion to the fullest. Take proper care to have an adult serve appropriate items for the children as you don’t want to have too much wasted food or broken dining ware around.
Ideas for the Main Course & Dessert Menu … Plus Beverages
Some common sweet and savory food items that go with a brunch are fruits, toast, muffins, panini, scones, biscuits, pancakes, crepes, cake, French toast, quiche, eggs (baked, coddled, hard boiled, fried, scrambled, poached and more), ham, bacon, casseroles, potatoes and sausages. Of course, you can organize this brunch with all of your unique creativity by adding new dishes of your choice such as pizzas, sandwiches, sweet quinoa, vegetable-ham-cheese frittata, caramel pecan roll, charlotte, tarts, pudding, oatmeal with fruit and nuts, soufflé, manchego tortilla, doughnuts, spiced buns with marmalade, waffles, pies, hot cross buns, a variety of fruit and vegetable salads with delectable dressings, and healthy granola with syrup, fruit and nuts. Use an abundance of healthful fruit and vegetables in your recipes. Clearly, there is a great plenty of menu items to choose from.
And don’t forget the beverages. For these, you can select and serve from, black, white, green, oolong, herbal or flavored tea – hot or iced. You can also serve cold coffee or piping hot coffee with or without milk. Add to these options a variety of juices, mocktails, and cocktails. Most popular are the Bloody Mary and Mimosas. But on the whole, it would be wise for you to keep the menu limited to a total of seven dishes chosen well-balanced from both sweet and salty options in addition to about four beverages to keep things manageable and your guests from getting overwhelmed with the variety. Even so, after feasting from such a full and inviting spread you and your guests will be brimming with a satiety that comes only from mouth watering indulgence.
For Your Brunch – Great Outdoor Furniture, Home Furnishings, and Tableware
Brunches are best enjoyed in your home’s outdoors which look best when aptly themed outdoor furniture is placed there. For your outdoor and patio furniture needs there are many good online stores. You can turn to ChameleonJohn to provide you with great online coupons so that you can save a lot and get huge discounts and profitable deals while shopping for outdoor décor items at the online stores for Crate & Barrel, Frontgate, Hayneedle, Home Decorators Collection, Horchow, and Kirkland’s. Here, you can get the best of garden décor items too such as fountains and statues to beautify your lawns. Also, when your guests visit your home for a weekend brunch every room must be beautiful and in perfect order.
To ensure this you can shop for furniture, furnishings, and other home décor items from various online stores such as Brylane Home, Crate & Barrel, Cymax, FabFurnish, and Frontgate. To cook and serve in state-of-the-art kitchen and tableware, you should visit the online stores of Zansaar, Sur La Table, Raymour & Flanigan, Horchow, and Ikea. For these stores too, our online coupons from ChameleonJohn will help you save the maximum amount while also getting great deals, freebies and free shipping offers as you set out to beautify you home, inside and outdoors, and serve up a great brunch cooked in high quality kitchenware and served in the most elegant dining ware.
Some More Miscellaneous Pointers … and it’s a Wrap!
You can host a weekend brunch in any season be it spring, summer, winter, or autumn and even on festivals such as Christmas or Easter. Just shuffle around the menu and the seating (indoor or outdoor) and your guests will be able to make the most of it, irrespective of the weather and more so because of it. Do remember that brunch can be either casual or formal in terms of dress code, menu, seating, dining and the general ambience, so take your preferred pick and go with it. Additionally, you can also have games and activities to go with the event for the adults too, such as Pictionary, housie and a karaoke session.
Your guests will be entirely involved and entertained with the conversation and games and totally enrapt with the food. It would be wise to neaten up your home and garden, and set the table with dining ware, tablecloth linens and napkins much before your guests are due to arrive to avoid getting into a rush. So, spruce things up beforehand as much as you can, especially outdoors and in the guest washrooms with an air freshener, soap dispensers and bars, towels, and toilet paper. Also remember to have adequate refrigerated water, ice and beverages in the refrigerator ready. Take all these factors into consideration and it’s a wrap!
Score a Complete Success as the Host
To sum it up, a brunch is a great little party for a small gathering and having it on a weekend makes it all the more fun filled, happy and relaxing. When you host a weekend brunch for you and your friends, it is a great way to connect, unwind and replenish your depleted physical and mental reserves. Plus having your kids there with you adds joy while also doing away with the hassles of finding a baby sitter. With scrumptious food and beverages, lots of cocktails, pleasing music by popular choice, the laid back weekend attitude, games, entertainment, sunshine, fresh air, nature from your garden, and conversation thrown in, the entire combination with its fill of good things does make for a satisfying, rejuvenating, and memorable day so that you as a host can score a complete success with your outstanding and fruitful weekend brunch. Your guests will want more of your hospitality so get ready to get set for your next one. As with weekend brunches – it’s the more of them the merrier!
