You have called your boss for dinner and are looking to impress him and his family. Your wife has been busy all day preparing the choicest of dishes and you have been running around the corner store to get her requirements every now and then. Your bar is ready, and so is the list of snacks you are going to serve with each drink. But have you given a thought to the place where they are going to sit for the better part of the evening? While your living room is only going to be used towards the first half of the evening, it is your dining room where your guests are going to spend most of their time as well as have the highlight of the evening – the meal. Is it adequately impressive? Have a look around.



Start with the overall setting. Is it looking good? Do your dining room chairs go well with the dining table and the cabinets? If you have been buying things off and on that caught your fancy, you may well need to have a look at the overall facade of your room. Does your dining room hutch match the dining set overall? If you feel uncomfortable, replace it with a better looking wooden or a glass hutch. Don’t have the energy or the money to buy one immediately? Never mind. Remove it totally for now. Better not to have anything than to display furniture with poor matching taste.

Look at the placement of your dining room furniture next. Is there adequate space for comfortably seating all the guests and your family members? If yes, you could go in for a sitting dinner, and if not, a well spread buffet would be in order. Either way, there has to be adequate space for moving around – both for the guests, and the lady of the house to shuttle between the kitchen and the dining room.

Check if your boss has small children accompanying him. Children generally love special children’s chairs that are higher than the others or that can be affixed on to the table in case of infants. Most mothers have them, so maybe you could just scout around for one if your own is not readily available.

The side tables should be adequate to display your decoration pieces comfortably. Do not crowd your pieces with every single souvenir you picked up during your worldwide travels – restrict yourself to the most exclusive pieces. The rest can either be displayed on the wall, in another room, or totally kept aside for another party. You may like to restrict your display to the more sturdy pieces if the boss has small children. I’m sure you wouldn’t like your exquisite Italian vase going to pieces while you put on a forced smile and say “Never mind, boss, it was just an ordinary vase. I’ll get another one!"

Get a flower decoration to enhance the overall effect of your settings. While fresh flowers work best, artificial ones will do the job too. Just make sure your love for flowers of either variety does not let you overdo the whole thing. Keep one decoration in the centre, another in one corner at most. Let the rest of them be placed in other rooms like your living room or your bedroom.

So go ahead and treat your boss to the best dinner he ever had. And look forward to the next raise as well!