11 Old-School Hosting Tips From Martha Stewart That We Can't Wait To Try

For decades, the mere mention of Martha Stewart has struck a combination of fear, envy, and admiration into the hearts of home cooks and would-be party hosts. Her dozens of books, magazine articles, and T.V. shows on cooking and entertaining have set a de facto (and, according to critics, unattainable) gold standard for DIY hospitality — either you're as good as Stewart, or you're a slacker who doesn't care about your guests. And, let's get real, with our busy lives and limited budgets, most of us are slackers — a few hot dogs and supermarket deli salads , a six-pack or two, and a group of friends, and we're good to go.

And this is totally fine. Any friends worth inviting over will understand and appreciate whatever you can offer. But for special occasions, it's fun to pull out all the stops — and for that, there's no better guide than Martha Stewart. And while Stewart is no slouch at keeping up with trends, she also has a soft spot for old-fashioned formal entertaining. So whether you want to add some retro charm to your next cookout or throw a sit-down dinner party that would make your great-grandparents proud, you can depend on Stewart for helpful tips — here are some of her best ones.

For hosts in the Victorian era, first impressions were of paramount importance: Visitors to a proper home would be immediately shown into the formal parlor, typically just a step or two from the front door. Such parlors were intended specifically for guests and formal events, and homeowners spared no expense to impress their visitors — here, you'd find the most ornate woodwork and fanciest furniture in the house, as well as the family's most prized possessions attractively on display.

Today, of course, we welcome guests into living rooms and family rooms, where they're more likely to encounter our dogs and kids than a butler waiting to take their drink orders. But while expectations have changed, first impressions still count. If you're hosting houseguests, Martha Stewart recommends that you turn your entryway into a welcome and orientation area –- set out a basket with maps of the area (with your favorite attractions highlighted), along with your wi-fi code and any other information your guests will need to feel truly at home.

In Martha Stewart's first book, the 1982 classic Entertaining, Stewart emphasizes that parties aren't just about food and drinks and friends — to her, they are carefully choreographed events, with every element intentionally selected to evoke a mood and tell a story. Stewart saw party hosts not just as caterers, but as directors of an interactive theater production, with the guests as both the players and audience. "I feel like a stage director, looking for the right set and props to bring his production to life," she wrote of her catering work for a client. "Parties are productions, not unlike theatrical productions."

And for her, among the most important props is a show-stopping centerpiece for the dining table. "A table is in fact a stage and should be so considered," she wrote. "A table is an empty space and filling it is a gesture of thoughtfulness." But filling space isn't enough — your centerpiece should also be memorable. Stewart suggests arranging natural items, such as fruit and interestingly shaped branches, to create eye-catching seasonal displays. And if you want to go the extra mile, select a centerpiece that honors your guests and their interests. When entertaining guests from Japan, Stewart wrote, she created a centerpiece of flowering kale, considered a symbol of affection and good will in their homeland.

Most of us only ever encounter place cards at formal weddings, but at one time, they were a must at any proper dinner party – and Martha Stewart still embraces them, even for parties thrown at home. If nothing else, they offer another excuse to find or make more cool decorations, an opportunity Stewart never seems to turn down. Place cards not only eliminate that awkward pre-meal seat negotiation shuffle, but can enhance the theme of your meal — for Christmas celebrations, for instance, Stewart creates tissue paper poinsettia bundles filled with candy to anchor each place card.

But if you cringe at the idea of being forced by an eager host to sit next to a stranger, you're not the only one. While seating charts can make some social interactions easier, they can cause serious stress to some guests if not designed thoughtfully. So if you're a host, make sure your seating plan allows everyone to be comfortable. Though it's fun to introduce new people to each other, a dinner party isn't the time to force your wallflower friend out of their comfort zone by separating them from their spouse. So make pretty place cards and keep your social engineering impulses in check — and everyone will remember your party fondly.

When you walk into a restaurant, you can pretty accurately estimate the price range on the menu by the napkins on offer. A dispenser of paper napkins on the table almost always means a super affordable meal. Cloth napkins rolled around the utensils or laid beside the plate indicate a mid-range restaurant, maybe with a few higher-end specialties. And cloth napkins folded into flowers or swans mean a fancy — and pricy — meal ahead.

To elevate her dinner parties, Stewart takes a cue from the fine-dining world and includes elegantly folded napkins at each place setting. And the choice of folds and the moods they evoke are nearly endless — from an understated but elegant fan shape to a folded pockets with flowers tucked in to whimsical folded turkeys for the Thanksgiving table, Stewart has tried them all. And as she notes, even if you don't have all the gear for a fancy centerpiece or fancy china, a folded napkin can add a dramatic and memorable touch to even the plainest dinnerware.

Among the things Martha Stewart has always loved is leaning in hard on a party theme, whether this means keeping a large collection of vintage painted Easter eggs or decorating gift boxes to look like gingerbread houses for Christmas. And even if no major holiday is on the calendar, she always has a theme of some sort for her parties, even if it's only visible in the menu choices – she often opts for dishes featuring seasonal ingredients.

Among the more extravagant themed meals she featured in her first book was a luau for 20, commissioned for an orchid-growing client who wanted an event to showcase her blooms. Stewart's spread is far from a traditional Hawaiian luau — it featured a roasted suckling pig, rather than a grown pig slow-cooked in a pit, and included modern dishes such as coconut shrimp along with Hawaiian favorites such as teriyaki chicken. But with a buffet table covered in orchids and finger foods served in giant clam shells, it made guests feel as if they'd been transported to the islands. All this may be a bit much for most home cooks, but you can use it for inspiration: Decorate your buffet table with pretty shells, offer up a few vintage Polynesian favorites such as rumaki and sticky teriyaki chicken, mix up a few pitchers of fruity cocktails, and your guests will feel seriously spoiled.

No matter how much time we spend cleaning and decorating our living and dining areas for guests, somehow or another, everyone will end up in the kitchen. After all, that's where you will likely be much of the time, and you're the one everyone came to see. It's also where the food and drinks are, if guests arrive before you've had a chance to set them out. Indeed, the kitchen exerts such a pull on guests that it's become a cultural touchstone in some circles. In the deaf community, everyone crowds into the kitchen at parties, since it's typically the best-lit room in the house and thus optimal for sign-language conversations. And in Canada's Maritime provinces, kitchen parties, complete with live music, are a longstanding tradition – guests don't even pretend to care where your living room is.

Martha Stewart gets this. Even guests to her perfectly and seasonally decorated home manage to follow her into the kitchen and stay there. She doesn't try to fight it: Instead, if they're close friends, she'll put them to work or at least have a few nibbles and drinks on hand for them to enjoy as she finishes up her meal prep. For an easy, do-ahead kitchen snack, try some Indian spiced nuts. And to ensure her guests have a great experience while they're in her kitchen, Stewart makes sure it's tidy and comfortable before guests arrive.

Long before picnics became the easy outing of choice for busy families with messy children, they were elegant, much-anticipated events enjoyed by the aristocracy. After all, how better to enjoy the beauty of your multi-acre estate on a summer day than an outdoor spread of meat pies, roast beef, and steamed puddings, all washed down with sherry or brandy? It was these aristocrats who introduced the picnic to the masses, who adapted it to suit their own budgets and resources. And today, our picnic supplies are all too often styrofoam plates and plastic cups and cutlery. Convenient as they may be, they're depressing to look at and use, and not to mention terrible for the environment.

It doesn't have to be that way. Martha Stewart recommends a return to reusable picnic ware. However, she sees no need to bring one's best china and crystal to the beach or dog park. Instead, she recommends attractive but durable enamel plates and sturdy flatware, along with large cloth napkins (bring dark ones if you're serving anything saucy). She also recommends a cloth knife roll as a convenient and compact way to transport any utensils you'll need. All of this will add old-fashioned elegance (along with added sustainability) to your next picnic. And to keep everything in order in transport, she relies on a few modern tools — ziplock bags, large garbage bags, and insulated cooler bags.

For Martha Stewart, parties are theatrical productions, and no production is complete without a musical soundtrack. "Music is, to my mind, an essential element in any party," she wrote in Entertaining. But unless you're hosting a dance party, the music should serve the same role as your table décor — it's there to enhance the ambiance and evoke a theme, not to be the center of everyone's attention, so keep the volume to a discreet level.

When Stewart wrote Entertaining in 1982, she recommended records and tapes as the simplest ways to provide a musical soundtrack — today, of course, you can curate a themed playlist on your streaming platform of choice. But if you want to go the extra mile, Stewart recommended hiring live musicians, perhaps a strolling guitarist or flautist, or if you have a generous budget, a string quartet or other small ensemble. To find talented musicians willing to work affordably, she suggested checking out local music schools and conservatories, where students may be eager for professional opportunities and the chance to earn some pocket money.

Much as everyone loves fancy house parties, they've largely gone out of style among home cooks because they're a ton of work to organize and execute. And no parties can be tougher to enjoy than those you host yourself, especially if you're a perfectionist — you might finding yourself dashing in and out of the kitchen so often to fetch and clean things up that you won't have time to enjoy your guests or even your own cooking. For a party host, this can be a huge buzzkill.

And guess what? Your panicked performance anxiety is a buzzkill for your guests, too. Not only does it ruin the carefree, relaxed mood any good party should have, it makes your guests feel awkward and guilty for being there. This is not something you want to do to your friends. So if you're serious about throwing a fancy bash, do as Martha does – hire a student or underemployed actor or two to help with serving and cleanup. Brief them ahead of time on their duties and what to expect, and for a dressy touch, provide each with a matching apron, preferably one that reflects the theme of your party.

Some food trends are best left in the past — few of us are eager for the return of molded Jell-O salads laden with shrimp, bell peppers, or tuna. But some trends have solid staying power — even after falling out of fashion, they re-emerge in a modernized form a few years later.

Consider, for instance, the crudités platter. The it party appetizer a few years back, they're not only a great way to show off ultra-fresh vegetables, they're both prettier and more healthful than a bowl of chips and dip. But these trendy platters have a long pedigree. From the 1930s through 1970s, relish trays — cut glass platters of pickled and fresh veggies – were a standard appetizer at holiday dinners. And in the 1980s, Martha Stewart and her cohorts in catering began to offer extravagant displays of fresh vegetables and cheese. For her, as for modern lovers of crudités platters, presentation is everything. "Crudités are not just a haphazard bowl of cut-up carrot and celery sticks; they are closer to a good still life, an artful edible exhibit," she wrote. She was so fond of them she made the centerpiece of parties — the only food on offer would be an huge display of crudités, fruit, cheese, and bread, along with an assortment of dips (a fun one to try is this tangy pickle dip) for the veggies.

To throw an old-school dinner party, you need old-school table settings. A thick, pressed tablecloth, starched napkins, and a properly arrayed assortment of plates, silverware, and water and wine glasses will give your meal an instant aura of opulence, even if you cheated and sourced all your menu items from Trader Joe's instead of making them yourself.

If you've experienced a fine-dining meal, you have an idea of how such table settings should look and how you should use them. You start with the outermost utensils and move to the utensils closest to the plate for the main course. To reconstruct the look at home, arrange forks on the left side the plate in the order they'll be used, with the salad fork on the outside, the fish fork (if used) in the middle, and the fork for the main course closest to the plate. On the right side of the plate, place the knife for the main course closest to the plate (blade facing the plate), the butter knife to its right, followed by the soup spoon, if needed. Lay the dessert fork and coffee spoon above the plate, the bowl of the spoon facing left and the tines of the fork facing right. Finally, wine and water glasses go on the top right of each setting.