Appliances for Entertaining
August 13th, 2014
Whether you’re hosting a dinner party, celebrating a birthday or anniversary, or having your mates over for the grand final, a few well-chosen appliances can make a big contribution to your evening’s success.
Here’s a selection of handy appliances for entertaining – before your guests arrive, while you’re entertaining them, and when they’ve left:
Pre-Party Appliances
Freezer for ice
No matter the season or time of year, chances are your guests will appreciate a bit of refreshing ice in their drinks.
640L Whirlpool Side By Side Fridge 6ED2FHGXVA
If you’ve got a Side By Side or French Door fridge with a built in ice and water dispenser, you’re laughing. But if you only have your trusty freezer handy, you’d better get some ice ready in advance!
The twist and serve ice trays from the HRF224FW Haier 224 Litre Fridge
Twist & Serve ice trays are particular handy, though not essential, for preparing a stockpile of ice in advance. Just prepare a couple of trays, dump the cubes into a container in the freezer, and repeat.
Small cooking appliances
Cooking for your guests as well as your family can be a real labour of love. Fortunately, a whole assortment of small appliances are available to help deal with the labour, leave only… well, you know.
Food processors, blenders and mixers can do a great job of chopping, grinding or dicing ingredients in record time, allowing you to concentrate on the more finesse aspects of your dishes.
Rice cookers, slow cookers, deep fryers, bread makers and similar small appliances are all great for preparing special treats – this is their moment to shine!
Appliances for During your party
Food fridge
A French Door fridge of 3 or 4 doors offers plenty of room for large platters, so you can whip out entire trays of those snacks and treats you prepared earlier in a jiffy.
528L Samsung 3 Door Fridge SRF527DSLS
The generous capacity of these fridges also makes them handy for when guests arrive with a bottle or six, and you need somewhere to keep them nicely chilled (the bottles, not the guests. Though chilled-out guests are great company).
Speaking of which…
Drinks fridge
If EVERYONE brought something with them to drink, you may find yourself quickly running out of fridge space.
Source: Wikipedia
There is the old “bathtub full of ice” trick, but that requires buying big bags of ice, and sooner or later someone will make a distasteful joke about kidneys (or maybe that’s just the strange people I hang out with).
Wine storage cabinets and similar specialised beverage fridges can be quite excellent, but remember – single-temperature wine cabinets do their best work providing long-term cellaring, while the multi-temperature designs are usually better for keeping various wines at their best serving temperatures.
130L Westinghouse Bar Fridge WRM1300WC
But for most parties, a typical bar fridge should do just fine for adding that extra bit of storage required to keep drinks nice and cool for one evening.
Smart TV
While some of us are able to keep our guests entertained with nothing but our sparkling personalities, sometimes a party requires an extra bit of diversion, lest it quickly turn into a bit of a fizzer.
Even if you’re not hosting a movie night or gathering to watch the Big Game, a Smart TV can be a real help when it comes to entertaining your guests. With access to a wide variety of apps, plus an endless array of online content, a Smart TV can be something for anybody and everybody.
And if your Smart TV forms the centre of your home’s network of devices, you can access an even greater range of entertainment options, all from the one central screen that can be easily viewed by you, or any of your guests – how very democratic!
Big-screen/high-resolution TV
Of course, if your party IS a movie night, or all about watching a major sporting event, let’s not mince words – bigger is better.
TCL U85H9500FDS 84.6″ 215cm 4K Ultra HD Smart 3D LED LCD TV
Of course, “bigness” is not just a matter of screen size – after all, if you’re living in a smaller home, a monster 85-inch screen (such as the TCL TV above) may completely overwhelm your modest living space. Go large, obviously, but try not to overdo it.
Keep an eye out for TVs offering Full HD resolution, or even 4k or Ultra HD resolution with upscaling if you want an uber-detailed picture. And a 3D TV is ideal for giving your films that truly “cinematic” feel, though you’ll need enough pairs of 3D glasses handy for all your guests.
Audio
Audio systems in various shapes and sizes can deliver your party playlist to every room of the house… or at least the ones where your guests are hanging out.
Philips DTD3190 DVD Micro Music System
With an MP3 player dock, your guests can even share their own tunes, right off the devices they brought with them. Models with NFC or Bluetooth connectivity mean that no-one needs to worry about whether their plugs will properly line up – just wirelessly connect and go!
House of Marley CHANT Portable Audio System with Bluetooth
And if anyone’s super-keen to hear a particular song, having a sound system hooked up to your home’s network means that the song is almost always just a click and a (paid for) download away. Isn’t living in the future great?
Heating and cooling
If your party is taking place indoors, the comfort of your guests should always be a priority. Shivering or sweating party guests are more than likely having a bad time.
Fujitsu 7.1kW Reverse Cycle Spilt System Inverter Air Conditioner ASTG24KMCA
The simplest way to manage this is with a reverse-cycle air conditioner – no matter what time of year, your home can be as cool or warm as it needs to be. Otherwise, a dandy heater or fan can help to keep folks comfortable for an evening or so.
A dehumidifier and/or air purifier can also be useful when you have a guest or three with allergies – nobody wants to cough and sneeze through an otherwise pleasant evening!
BBQs
Now we’re cooking, if you’ll pardon the incredibly obvious and wholly intentional pun.
A barbeque doesn’t just have to be for scorching meat, vegetables or (as seen above) halloumi to a cinder – with the right attachments, it can also be used for rotisserie cooking, converted into a pizza oven… pretty much anything your imagination can dream up!
Also, a barbeque is more than just a cooking appliance – it’s very presence creates a kind of social lubricant that’s perfect for parties. Remember that Family Guy gag about gathering around the grill to comment on the meat as it cooks?
So even if you’re living in a tiny unit with an itty-bitty balcony, consider hosting a barbeque out there for your next party (assuming your strata rules allow it), as there’s nothing quite like a the camaraderie of communal cooking.
Small Appliances
In addition to the various small appliances used to prepare your food before the guests arrive, there are several other cool gadgets that can keep your guests fed and refreshed.
Coffee machines, juicers and blenders can all help to wet your guests’ whistles with a selection of tasty beverages.
Plus, operating some of these appliances can be just a little bit spectacular to watch – maybe not quite “Tom Cruise showing off his flair in Cocktail” spectacular, but entertaining enough for a bit of short-term amusement.
Post-Party Appliances
Dishwasher
Whether you’re cleaning up immediately after your last guest has left, or dealing with the fallout the next day while enduring the mother and father of all hangovers, a dishwasher can be big help when it comes to bringing things back under control.
Just scrape down your dishes (don’t worry about rinsing them) and correctly load them into the dishwasher, and you can leave the machine to handle the grunt-work while you put your feet up.
Vacuums and floorcare
Even the tidiest of guests leave small traces of their passage through your home, which you’ll still want to deal with if you like to keep your home pristine.
And of course, not all guests are tidy – if the evening featured any little accidents, you’ll DEFINITELY want to attend to these sooner rather than later.
A decent vacuum cleaner will prove its worth in these situations – even if you have to do the hard yards, the best vacuum cleaner designs are made for easy manouvering as well as efficient cleaning.
While it’s tempting to stumble off to bed and let the robot vacuum cleaner do the work, they often lack the power of larger vacuum designs, making them better for handling everyday maintenance than tackling big messes. Though if it was a big night, the robot may actually be able to navigate its way around the house more efficiently than you can…
If things are really bad, it’s time to whip out the carpet washer for soft surfaces, or the steam mop for hard surfaces. A deep clean from one of these specialised appliances should get the stains out before they can dig themselves in, leaving your floors spotless.
Your turn:
What appliances have you put to good use when planning or hosting a party? Is there an appliance for entertaining that you just couldn’t live without?
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