By Ted Schredd

Carve Pumpkins

Make it interactive
Anytime that you can build an activity into a party your guests become involved and keep themselves entertained. Play a game, have some craft supplies, or get them cooking. Interactivity gets people talking and allows them to loosen up. Make sure you hold their dinner or drinks hostage until they participate.

Introduce people
You can never introduce people too much. It helps people to remember names and can create kind of a joke about your over enthusiastic introduction activities. When you introduce someone try to throw a conversation bone in with your verbal launch. This Is Bill, he just had a baby, or changed jobs, or went on a vacation. When you introduce the other person back throw in another conversation bone, like how you met them or their favorite hobby.|

Nametags help a lot but people don't always want to wear one. I usually ask people to put their name and their fantasy nickname. This is a great conversation starter and inspires people to keep their name tag on.

Parade of Lost Souls - Vancouver

Add a theme
For some people getting involved in a theme is too far out of the comfort zone. But most of the time it works. Have some extra props so that if some people come over unprepared you can easily help them to be a part of it. If you have a western party; have a half a dozen scarves available or whatever you can use to dress them up according to your theme. Your guests will have no excuse not to play along. For some theme party ideas check out the Party Theme List.

Invite Interesting People
Try to invite interesting people. Even if there are some boring ones kicking around the interesting ones will certainly liven it up.

These people look pretty interesting

Food
Good parties have good food. There is some kind of Universal Law that says, "Those who provide quality snacks will be provided excellent party ambience". If you can't afford to pay for all the food have a potluck. How many times you gone to a party that has a bag of ripple chips. Ripple chips just don't cut it at a "good" party.

Have more than one kind of food available

When clean up comes around get everybody involved. Instead of waking up to a stack of dishes that can block the sun; I ask as many people as possible to help clean up. It takes two minutes as a team, or two hours by yourself. Crank some cleaning music and everybody will be happy to have it out of the way. If nobody wants to help just hold their dessert hostage.

Organize
Make sure you have everything for your par' tay. Music, paper plates, ice, name tags, a food preparation plan or whatever it is that you need. So many parties are ruined by forgetting to defrost something, no party music or some other detail. It may not ruin the evening but it can make your get together medium on the entertainment scale. Make sure you have everything you need.

Don't throw up on your guests
This is an obvious tip but sometimes we forget.

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