Who is Kathy Baldwin and what can I do for you?

Dear Honored Guest of Dinner-Party-Ideas.com,

My name is Kathy Baldwin and I am your host during your visit to this site. Have not heard of me yet? I am not surprised.

• I am not a famous chef on television.
• Nor do I own a restaurant that is featured in magazine articles.
• I am not a professional party planner to the celebrities.

What I am is a mother and wife who throws what I have been told are wonderful dinner parties. I host these parties easily and with no stress. I am able to have just as much fun as those attending, which some people find amazing.

I love to be with my friends and family, talking, laughing and being together and my favorite way to share that time together is with a delicious meal that I have prepared.

I love having people in my home and taking the time and effort to put together something special for us. My personal preference is for a multi course meal because it seems to make the event last longer, which to me is more fun.

Because I love that style of dinner party and ended up having so many of them, I needed to create a system that I could easily duplicate time and time again, with the same great results. I needed a system that would allow me to put together a dinner party with little notice so that I was free to entertain as I chose.

My mother, Lena, was an amazing person and hostess. I lost her in 2008 and that loss is very personal. What I did not lose was her incredible knowledge and expertise that she shared with me about food and entertaining.

I will admit that the sharing of knowledge started out when I was 8 years old by being unpaid labor but by the age of 12 I was able to make hollandaise sauce from scratch by myself so how could I complain?

I turned out to be an indispensable help to my mother while she was hosting party after party. Little did I know at that time, I was learning lifetime lessons that would serve me so well.

By the age of 18 I was hosting 6 course dinners by myself. I remember that night so clearly. It was my mother’s birthday and I made this dinner party as a birthday surprise for her. The meal included Sole Queen Victoria as a starter course and homemade desserts. It was a formal dinner for 10 guests and I could never have done it without my mother’s training.

That was my inaugural dinner party and I am thrilled that it was for my Mom.

My mother had all of her knowledge inside of her head and she knew instinctively what to do when and how. I was not born with that skill and had to learn it all.

I wanted to have parties like my mother did, parties that left the guests wondering how it was possible to do it all with so little effort.

I struggled to host dinner parties when I was a young adult on my own. I found that if food arrived how and when it should, that I had no idea how it happened. That resulted in many dinner parties that were not as stress free as they are now.

I did not want to take my chances and depend on fluke or luck for my organization, preparation or presentation so I worked to develop a system that worked for me, EVERY single time not just some of the times.

I spent many hours experimenting to get my system right for me. Many friends were used as my guinea pigs while I learned to create my system, but I am thrilled with the results.

Now I know how to evaluate a recipe, create a theme, create a preparation schedule that works for me and allows me not to miss any details. The system is easy to use by following the directions and takes all the guess work out of preparing a dinner party of any size.

I used this system only for myself because that was the only one that I made it for until I began being asked by friends and family to share my secrets. They were having the same problems I had coordinating and creating an elegant dinner party and found that I had the answer.

After sharing it with many people, I realized that I created something that was useful to more than just me and my friends and that was how website came to be.

This system I have created was done in Canada where I lived, worked and raised my family. I have since retired to the Lake Chapala area of Mexico and find that I am using my system way more now than I ever did.

The social life I am enjoying in Mexico during my retirement has allowed me to perfect my system because I am constantly entertaining now. Every time you are invited to someone’s house there is the need to reciprocate and there is a lot of reciprocating being done here.

If you have come here to learn how to host and prepare a dinner party that is easy for anyone including a beginner to use, then you have come to the right place.

You and I can work together for you to learn everything that is required to host your own amazing dinner party.

I am thrilled to be able to have the opportunity to share my experience and knowledge with you and hope you have as awesome of a social life as I now do.

Your friend,
Kathy