Need Helping Throwing A Housewarming Party

I've been to two very different house warming parties... The first one was held also as a SuperBowl party and they served typical football foods:

• Hot and BBQ wings
  
• Pizza
  
• Veggie tray
  
• Huge sub sandwich
  
• Tons of sodas

This was more of a "Come and stay" kind of party. The whole thing was set up as a buffet and the paper products and "plastic-ware" was put at the very beginning of the table. The atmosphere was really laid back and casual.

The other one was more of an Open House kind of party. People were welcome to just "drop in" for a few minutes to take a look at the house and talk to the couple... And they were welcome to stay as long as they liked. They served several different hors devours rather than going with the kinds of foods listed above:

• Stuffed mushrooms
  
• Tiny quiches
  
• Cucumber finger sandwiches
  
• Finger sized crab cakes
  
• Chocolate dipped strawberries
  
• Small fruit tarts
  
• Champagne punch

As I mentioned before, they were really very different. In this one, little stacks of plates and napkins were placed in different places around the main rooms along with a tray or tower of the hors devours. They used the nicer plastic/paper plates and it was a much classier affair.

It's very difficult to "get creative" when laying out your paper products and silverware because you are so limited on what you can do with them... One option that I've thought of using is placing them in a picnic basket. Just put the plates/bowls right in and you can use mason jars or large plastic cups for the silverware. The food presentation, however, you can really have some fun with... Run down to a Salvation Army or something and get some interesting serveing trays and "accessories." For example... Use a porcelain bowl for dip on a bamboo mat on top of a piece of scrapwood! Arrange your vegetables around on the bamboo mat and you have a very interesting visual! Just use your imagination... Once you get started you could really have some fun with this :-)

Hope this helped! If I can think of anything else I'll post again :-)
~L

BTW: It's very thoughtful of you to do this for your pastor... I'm sure no matter what you do he will appreciate and enjoy it :-)

Hi Carrie, It's me again :-) I just asked one of my bridesmaid's about this and she said that she once went to a really neat house warming that had a theme... I didn't even think of doing that to a housewarming party! But they stuck to a cellestial feel.. They served star fruit (stars), canteloupe (moons), star & moon cookies (may sound corny but they were apparently beautifully decorated), sparkling lemonade punch and a few other things (which she couldn't remember). If you want to keep it more lighthearted, but not too much so, I think something like this would be fantastic! You'll have to let us know what you end up doing :)

~L