As winter sets in, most people close up their sunroom for the season, and then spend the next few months staring wistfully at this unused space. However, if you have a four season sunroom, winter is the best time to get your sunroom up and running again. The clear crisp days makes for excellent levels of sunshine to naturally heat your room, as well as crystal clear nights where you can star gaze without the biting cold. It also gives you a great opportunity to host for the big holidays such as New Year’s Eve as you’ll have so much more space for people to spread into. If you haven’t got your Desert Sun Patios sunroom installed yet, there’s still to time so that you can make the most of your sunroom this New Year’s Eve. A typically installation project measures in weeks rather than months, so you could make this the year where you are the one hosting New Year’s Eve instead of complaining about the lack of space in your home.
With your new sunroom in place, it’s highly likely that you’ve already invited all of your friends and family round to show off your new Desert Sun Patios sunroom, but New Year’s Eve offers a special time of year to put that new entertaining space to good use. It’s a traditional time to get people together, and your new sunroom gives you so many more options for entertaining. It could be used as a room to congregate in at midnight so you can watch the Calgary fireworks, or a serving station for food so guests don’t mill around the kitchen prep areas.
While you’re likely to use the rest of your home to stage the party, your sunroom should act as the natural focal point as it’s a room specifically set up for entertaining. Here are some top tips to help you make the most of your sunroom this New Year’s Eve:
- Keep the curtains open – A New Year’s Eve celebration in Calgary is quite unique: it’s usually way too cold to be outside, but with the coldness comes a stillness that seems prophetic with the advent of the new year. You want your guests to be able to get a sense of the outside world while staying warm and cozy in your sunroom. Keeping the curtains open also allows you to see the firework displays that go off around Calgary as the clocks strike midnight. An important strategy to note here is to use the curtains throughout the day to help you maintain a comfortable temperature. This means keeping them open to allow sunlight in during the day, closing them to keep that warmth in as you prepare for your New Year’s Eve sunroom party, and then opening them up around 11pm to catch those early firework displays.
- Change the eating paradigm – For most people, food at New Year’s Eve parties comes either as a pot luck buffet or a formal sit down meal. Sunroom entertaining is all about doing something different, so try combining the two. Choose a Moroccan-inspired theme and have people sit on throw pillows or beanbag cushions to get more people around a low set of tables, each with a different set of dishes. A Mexican themed party allows you to combine the best elements of pot luck and formal dining by setting up a make your own burrito bar. Each guest could bring a filling and you don’t have to worry about catering to all the different dietary requirements. Finally, you could also have different parts of the meal in different areas of the house, ending up with dessert and coffee in the sunroom.
- Clear out big furniture – you may have moved couches and bookshelves into your sunroom, but as your goal is to make it your central entertaining space, you want to get rid of as many of these big items as possible. Consider moving in tables for people to rest their drinks on, as well as plates of appetizers and snacks. You’ll need to decide whether to keep these tables pushed back to the edges, thereby encouraging people to mingle in the middle, or turn them into the central focus of the room. The advantage of the latter is that if you have a theme for your New Year’s Eve sunroom party, the food table can be the centrepiece for everyone to admire. However, you’ll need to be creative about how to keep the plates replenished without constantly having to move your guests out of the way. You should also consider getting rid of the chairs. This will create more space and keep people on their feet; this will encourage mingling and moving throughout the night.
- Host your own fireworks – the big advantage of hosting New Year’s Eve in your brand new Desert Sun Patio sunroom is the large windows which will give you incredible views over your neighbourhood and your own yard. Find someone willing to go outside just after the midnight celebrations and host your own fireworks celebrations that everyone can enjoy from the warmth and safety of your sunroom. Consider some big high rockets if you have skylights or low level fireworks if you don’t. In either way, you want to plan for around 5 minutes’ worth of show time to make it a New Year’s Eve to remember.
Above all, you need to have a plan of how you will gather everyone a few minutes before midnight for speeches or simply some quiet reflection time. Your sunroom will be the ideal spot for this, but you’ll also need to think about what you’ll be using to gauge when it’s exactly 12:00. It will be hard to show something on a screen, so a countdown clock or listening to a radio broadcast will create a different atmosphere. As the New Year is chimed in, be sure to have drinks and music ready to celebrate, as well as an opportunity to watch fireworks through your new big Desert Sun Patio sunroom windows.
