We hosted a dinner and game night for six in our tiny house this past weekend! It was cozy! (Sorry the photos are dark. I had the lights bright in the kitchen where I was cooking!)
My Tiny House Adventure Began back in the fall of 2011 when I rented Brittany Yunker's Bayside Bungalow for my first year of grad school. Within my first month of tiny living I learned about Entertaining in the Tiny House when I hosted a dinner party for six. This weekend Isha and I hosted our first dinner party for six here in T42. And it turns out it was actually trickier in our house than it had been in Bayside Bungalow, but we made it work and had a great time, too!
Isha and I spent most of the afternoon Saturday prepping things up, using mostly ingredients from our winter CSA from Full Plate Farm and we had fun working in kitchen together. We have a two butt kitchen, so it's not unusual for us both to be in the kitchen at once, but this was the largest meal we'd ever cooked in our. We just decided I was going to head chef and he was going to sous chef. Then we each took one side of the kitchen and got to work!
It was an Asian fusion dinner with four courses: a squash and mung bean curried soup, a cabbage salad with almonds and fruit and a lime-rice vinegar dressing, a stirfry with parsnips, radishes, and carrots, and a figgy chia seed pudding for dessert. Mmmmm!
The set up in Bayside Bungalow was that there was a little window seat and we'd pull the desk/table over to the window seat and have three of us sit there on the window seat and others at chairs pulled up to the other sides. When we designed T42 we figured on dinner for 2 regularly and 4 occasionally, but we didn't plan for larger parties. (When we host larger gatherings we use the big house, but this weekend we didn't do that for two reasons. First, we had friends coming over who had never seen our tiny house and we wanted them to be able to experience it. Second, we didn't reserve the dining space in the big house and other community mates were also hosting a dinner party on Saturday night! We'd originally hoped the flip-up table I use as my desk might work in our living room, but it's too wide. (Interestingly, I think the table Brittany had in Bayside Bungalow probably WOULD work in our space, but it would take up more space in our office on a regular basis, so we're living to the lowest common denominator.)
So we ended up serving our meal in the great room and everyone just balanced their dishes on their laps. We washed dishes in between each course (and we'd borrowed some from the big house because we only have a set of four plates, bowls, spoons, forks, and knives!) While I made up the stirfry partway through the evening everyone else piled into the office where we'd laid out a picnic blanket and pillows and they played Bucket of Doom. They balanced the cutting board we use as a table across all of their knees and it worked out just fine. In fact, as Sierra pointed out, the proximity made it a cozy atmosphere for games. That was evident from the large amount of laughter as we negotiated the small space. We think it brought us all a little closer!
Playing a game in our office is a balancing act. It just adds to the fun and the indoor picnic atmosphere!