Let's Have Brunch: The Drink Setup

We've covered the meal plan, we've started the paperwhites growing (they're coming along nicely! You can see some in the picture below.)

The other main steps are to clean the house (I won't bore you with those details!) and also how to have everything set up the day of the party.

One thing that has helped us simplify party setup is that we arrange the drinks the same way for every gathering. We use an ice bucket for plenty of ice and put drinks out at room temperature, including water, which seems to be the drink of choice these days at almost all our parties. This saves the limited refrigerator space for foodstuffs when I don't have to worry about chilling drinks (other than white wine, etc.) I have a carafe I fill with boiling hot water to make tea (for tea drinkers) and our coffee pot is another carafe; we simply brew the coffee and it stays warm in the container. We set out cream and sugar with teabags and cups, and guests can help themselves. We bought 2 dozen plain, cheap stackable glasses from Ikea some years ago so that we don't have to rely on paper cups for cold drinks. Everything more or less fits together on our bar in the dining room:

For a larger party, say in the summer, we might add coolers filled with kid-drinks (water, juice boxes) or Dad-drinks (beer, soda).

For brunch this Sunday, I plan on making fresh squeezed orange juice and using it to make champagne mimosas, in addition to the standard drink fare you see pictured here.

We have set up this drink arrangement so many times now, and it works really well! Our guests can help themselves to a wide variety of drink options without having to invade the kitchen; and the arrangement is something we can set up in our sleep we have done it so many times. This allow more time and energy to focus on cooking the food! Which is what I need to focus on next...