Festive Fun: My Fantasy Christmas Dinner Party

Tonight I'm kicking off what I'm hoping will be a fun feature that I will be hosting every night in the run up to Christmas.

The idea for this My Fantasy Christmas Dinner feature came about as over the last couple of years our company decided to have site based Christmas parties, with just a couple of free drinks and a buffet on offer, rather than the sit-down team meals that they used to pay for.  As I haven't had a traditional family Christmas for quite some time, I always love the chance to have a good catch up with friends over a meal and drinks especially if it's the chance for someone else to cook for me, so decided to host a virtual dinner party instead.

For this feature which I hope everyone will enjoy reading, I invited bloggers and authors to take part in hosting their own Fantasy Christmas Dinner party. My initial thoughts were for them to come up with 5 authors, dead or alive, who they would invite to the party and why they chose them. Then for an added challenge I suggested that maybe this could be expanded to include fictional characters and maybe plan the perfect menu or after dinner entertainment! So here's my feeble attempt as I'm definitely a reader and not a writer...

My first guest won't be a surprise for some of my friends as she wrote one of my all-time favourite books Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. I've lost count how many times I've read this book since my teens and my lovely blogger friend Linda Hill gifted me this gorgeous Macmillan Collector's Library edition for my birthday a couple of years ago.

The second guest is an author I would have loved to have met in person, but sadly I never got the chance to meet her although she was always so lovely to interact with on social media and had been a guest on the blog many times, Emma Hannigan. Emma was an inspirational women who sadly died last year after a long battle with cancer. Her final book The Gift of Friends is still sat in my TBR as I know that once I've read there will be no more new books coming from her but think I might bite the bullet and read it during my time off over Christmas.

For my next guest I'm going back to Little Women and would invite Meg to join us. Out of the four March sisters she has always been my favourite, I guess in a way she's the one most like myself, happy to be in the background but she's the one that everyone turns to for support so that's probably why I'm drawn to her more than her more popular sister Jo. Like the book I've watched the various TV and film adaptions of Little Women and I'm definitely looking forward to go to the cinema this Christmas to watch the latest version.     
I don't think we can have a dinner party without someone to bring the fun and for that I think I would have to go with CJ (Caz) Tudor as she has always been such great entertainment whenever I've seen her at festivals. I'd love to delve into what makes her tick and her writing process as as how can someone who always seems so jolly and fun write such dark, sinister books and she always has excellent taste in jumpers.

For my last guest I decided to invite an author whose books I would buy without even knowing what they are about but even that was a hard decision to make as there are quite a few that fit into that category. So in the end I decided to go with an author whose books I've enjoyed in the past and whose next book All My Lies Are True, a long awaited sequel to The Ice Cream Girls, is one I'm desperate to read so I'm hoping that by inviting Dorothy Koomson she might reveal how this book came about after all of these years.

Now onto the menu and after dinner entertainment. For starter it will have to be homemade roasted red pepper and tomato soup which has become one of my go-to lunches to take into work although I normally only make a batch for 2 portions but it should be easy enough to adapt for 6.

Next up I will have to go with the traditional turkey Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, although in our house we combined traditions so always had gammon as well as turkey which came from my mum's Irish side of the family, as well as yorkshire puddings which were introduced when my mum met her partner - he had them with every roast dinner and not just beef. I hope there's no vegetarians amongst the group as I wouldn't have a clue what to offer instead. And for dessert I think I would have to go with Profiteroles but this course would definitely be store bought, especially as there's some lovely variations on offer, rather than handmade as I have never made choux pastry before and not going to attempt it now!

I struggled to come up with ideas for the after dinner entertainment which were clean and suitable for publishing! In the end I've decided on the drinking game, Never Have I Ever. Going round the table everyone comes up with a statement starting with the phrase "Never have I ever..." and followed by something that they have never done. For example, if you have never swum with dolphins, you could say "Never have I ever swum with dolphins." After the statement is made, any guest that has done that particular action before must take a drink. The winner can either be the person who drank the most shots or the person with the most fascinating stories. But come on we all know that whenever there is drink and good company involved, there are no losers!

I'm hoping the posts coming up from authors and bloggers will be some light relief from what can be an extremely stressful time of year.  I do still have a couple of spaces free if anyone fancies joining in, the more the merrier, and I'm more than happy to post a couple of posts a night.

All book titles in bold are Amazon UK Affiliate links which will earn me a few pence if anyone clicks through and makes a purchase - any money earned will go towards buying books or gifts for giveaways.