Entertaining

Sorry for the unplanned absence.  My mother and younger sister came up for a surprise visit.  They stayed at the hotel, not at my place, but they came home from work with me and didn't leave until about time to go to bed, so I couldn't carve out time to get a couple blog posts up...

What are your views on entertaining?  For me, there are a select few who I'm happy to just have come visit, without any sort of plans and we'll just figure it out as we go.  But usually, I like to have things ready..  A clean house, something planned for dinner (if they're staying, or over near a meal time), drinks in the house to offer them and some idea on how to entertain my guests.

I've come to the conclusion that this might be an old fashioned view of entertaining... My grandmother has a cook book, it was a wedding present.  I forget what year it was published, but its from an age where entertaining is always much closer to my preference.  There is a large section in the back about planning dinner parties.  From menu to seating plans.  That's right, it expects seating plans to be the norm for small dinner parties.  And a lot went into it too!  Unfortunately, I don't remember most of it...

It really seems to show how much has changed though.  Not that long ago, seating plans were the norm, now, we're inviting people over without deciding what to make for dinner...

Do you think we're changing for the better, or loosing something wonderful?  Or is it just different?