There’s nothing better than a casual summertime bonfire party with your friends and family. Use this printable checklist to make sure you have everything you need for a perfect evening around the fire!
We’re so fortunate to live on a street with great neighbours and even more fortunate that a lot of our neighbours happen to be young families with kids the same age as ours. Since we live out in the country, we don’t have many neighbours at all, so it’s kind of an amazing stroke of luck that the few houses around here happen to all be populated by people that get along so well. We try to get the whole group together as often as we can and one of our favourite things to do is to have a big bonfire party in someone’s backyard. It’s a perfect chance for the kids to stay up past their bedtimes and create memories together, while the adults get a little break and can catch up around the fire.
These get togethers are sometimes well planned-out, sometimes last minute, but we always have a great time. I’ve kind of named my friend Sarah “Queen of the Bonfire Party” because she’s always such a great hostess and can pull off a gathering that seems so well planned-out no matter how last minute it is. She also happens to be my part-time assistant here on The Creek Line House, so I decided to take advantage of her expertise and see if she would be interested in putting together a little checklist of her must-haves for the rest of us so we can always seem like the perfect hostess too! I really just wanted this list for myself, but I decided to share. 🙂
The Backyard Bonfire Party Checklist
Doesn’t it always seem like you forget the most obvious things when you’re trying to juggle all the little details of entertaining? This checklist will help with that, for sure. I like that Sarah has included all the obvious things, like the supplies you’ll need to create the actual bonfire, as well as the things you’ll need for making your friends and family feel at home. You’ll also see some of the extra items that she likes to have on hand that really make things go smoothly and make her look like she really has this entertaining thing down.
One of the things that she hasn’t included on here that she often uses is a set of dome food covers to keep bugs off of snacks. Of course, depending on where you live, these may not be necessary, but they’ve definitely been a big help on some night!
I also really like that she has a little caddy that she keeps stocked with things like napkins, forks, and spoons that she’ll always bring out and put on the table. You may be only serving finger food, but it’s nice to have everything right there and not have to run into the house if someone needs a fork to eat their s’more that fell apart.
If you’d like to download the free printable bonfire party checklist, just sign up for my mailing list by entering your email address below and I’ll send you the link to download the checklist straight to your inbox!
I keep all of my seasonal checklists in a handy-dandy binder and I’ll be adding this one to my “summer” section that I’ve already been getting a lot of use out of this year! You can read more about my household binder system here: Super Simple Household Planning Binder System
Happy Bonfire Hosting!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.