Etiquette Dinner

As mentioned, on Saturday before Valentine's Day, Jason and I were the host couple at a youth Etiquette Dinner. Let me explain first what this means. The Stake youth leaders had couples come and put together a table with the settings and decorations and sat with the kids to kind of mediate the conversation and help the kids know how to have good table manners and things like that.

For the week before, Kristen and I were trying to figure out what we should put on the table. Kristen has white on white plates so we kept trying to think of how to add color to the table.

Hilary has white plates with a red stripe around the edge so I used half of each kind and alternated them.


It was a subtle difference but I liked it. Then Kristen has stem water glasses that we used. Jason had the idea of using candles. We put them on a red plate, tied a fun ribbon around them and spread red rose petals and candy around the table.


We were totally stoked when we found some round red place mats on clearance. They were just what we wanted to have color on the table and gave it a subtle polka dot look (with the ribbon on the candles tying it all together).


Once we got everything set up, we looked around and I liked our table best. Poor Jason had to keep hearing me talk about what I liked best about our table and why I preferred it to all the other ones. I find that when I am planning something, I'm not very good about visualizing what the end result is going to look like. So, when I do it and it turns out well, I'm pleasantly surprised.

The dinner part of the evening was fun too. We had a full table with two boys and four girls and the conversation went well. Generally, it flowed through the whole evening. The end was a little bit funny. They passed out conversation starters and they were all about death. Things like: 'if you had one day left to live, what would you do' or 'where would you like to be buried' or 'what do you want on your epitaph' or 'if you could take one thing to heaven, what would it be'. We thought that was pretty funny.

Then the boys were able to collect the balloons and suck helium. They brought so many home and one balloon didn't fit in our trunk and it flapped spun in the wind. Sadly, it didn't make it home but it was fun to see how far it went.