4th of July BLOCK PARTIES : How To

HAPPY 4th of JULY!!! Its that time again- How to pull it all off?.....

The biggest challenge to a block party menu is organization. Who’s bringing what? For how many? Take a breather and follow these tips for easy summer party planning with a little help from some familiar web services.

Planning a block party can be daunting. Perhaps one of the most challenging parts is feeding the hungry crowd. How do you make sure there’s enough food for all and that everything (including incidentals) is taken care of? How about a little help from an online sharing service like Clipboard or Pinterest?

Organizing the menu

You may be tempted to just ask everyone to bring their favorite foods, but remember that means that you’ll have a lot of disjointed dishes, and you could easily end up with six potato salads and no veggies.

Set up a board on Clipboard or Pinterest just for your party planning and invite one member of each household to join. While Pinterest works for this, we prefer Clipboard because it has a few features that make it especially useful for party planning (like tagging, the ability to @-reply to bring a note to someone’s attention and the ability to create notes without special clips from the web).

Have a single small committee decide on the menu or theme. For example, if you decide to do barbecue, you’ll want one or two people in charge of the main dish and everyone else in charge of extras. Either assign each household a dish to bring or ask them to submit ideas by pinning or clipping them to the main board. Then everyone can see at a glance if there’s a duplicate and those things can be worked out in advance.

Once the menu is set, make sure you keep people informed of how many people they’ll need to serve and other information they’ll need. For example, if someone is supposed to bring baked beans, add a note to their clip letting them know how many people they’re serving, what serving utensils to bring, if any, and whether they should bring optional add-ins (like cheese, green onions, etc.).

For Fun and Safety

If you live in Temecula as I do, 4th of July can be HOT!! Water activites can bring some relief while also bringing the FUN. Water balloons can sometimes get out of hand so consider splurging $20 at the $1 store and pick up a couple dozen squirt guns- it doubles as a parting gift!

If you do not have access to a pool for your Block Party, gather the resident attendees together and set up a shift schedule as to who’s water hose (water bill) gets used for each timed activity (BE CAREFUL not to go over your allotted local water consumption restrictions!!)

Another good thing to consider during any planned event is First Aid. Most Block Party attendees have more than 1 child bring your ratio of adults to kids to practically 50/50. Even though you are not worried about Uncle Doug taking a nose dive into the water cooler after one too many MGD’s, you need to consider the possibility of accidents happening with rambunctious little ones having fun on a Holiday. So BE PREPARED! Make sure that you have stock in plenty of band-aids, topical antiseptic spray, ice packs, and the typical assortment for most child-hazards.

Have a Safe and Enjoyable 4th of July everyone!