Entertaining: Tips for Entertaining With Fun, Style and Ease Thanksgiving or Any Time.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I was delighted to meet Cheryl Najafi and learn some great entertaining tips.

Entertaining Martha Stewart recently in a fun and stylish way came naturally to Cheryl, who welcomes guests with an ease any host would envy.

"I took the focus off myself," says Cheryl, who celebrated with Martha the 20^th anniversary of Martha Stewart, the business.

To put the focus on Martha, Cheryl printed quotes from Martha's Website, cut them into colorful circles and placed them around the centerpiece. She asked questions to engage her guest, such as how Martha got started. 

When the mechanics of a frozen cube in the tomato basil soup Cheryl served to Martha went awry, Cheryl simply deflected it.

On Cheryl's Website, CherylStyle, learn everything you need to plan fabulous celebrations ranging from Thanksgiving to a 50^th birthday to a child's pajama party. Check out Cheryl's four unique ideas for Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend parties, including a Black Friday Brunch, to enliven your holiday.

What makes Cheryl's style fun is that she breaks the rules for "proper" entertaining. You'll be able to read more about it in her book, You're So Invited: Panic Less, Play More and Get Your Party On, which will be published in May.

Recently, I asked Cheryl how she does it. Here are some of her tips for fun, stress-free entertaining with style.

Don't take yourself too seriously.

Cheryl believes in taking a laid back attitude about anything that goes wrong. If the cake gets smushed in the box, give everyone a spoon and pass the cake around. That will make for fun a memory.

Prepare ahead.

Set the table, even a day or so ahead of time. Before guests arrive, fill water glasses and, if it's a large group for, say, a cocktail party, pour several glasses of wine in advance.

When entertaining close friends and family, such as on Thanksgiving, assign chores ahead of time, the way people assign pot luck ahead of time.

Send an email to everyone who'll be joining you, asking what chore assignments they prefer. Include a list, such as washing dishes, clearing the table, helping get the food get to the table, trash management.

You don't have to cook.

Cheryl says, "I'm not a chef and I don't pretend to be." Rather than cook, Cheryl choreographs. Even if you do like to cook, lighten the load by enlisting guests to bring a dish side dish (check out some awesome recipes) and ordering from your favorite bakery.

Tiny bites

Picture this: it's Thanksgiving. Your daughter and son-in-law each have divorced parents. That could mean four Thanksgiving dinners. It may be an extreme case, but even two huge holiday dinners would be one too many.

So try Cheryl's idea of tiny bites and create a Thanksgiving cocktail party. Serve turkey sliders and stuffing in shot glasses; arrange the offerings in a tiered serving arrangement.

For dessert, buy a sheet cheesecake from Costco and cut it into bite-sized pieces that you then put into small paper muffin holders. For a flourish top them with a bit of whipped cream and a tiny slice of lemon.

Serve pumpkin pie bites the same way.

Embrace your best resource: your rest.

Especially during the week leading up to your event, make it a point to get enough sleep. Practice some relaxing rituals before going to bed, such as a soothing bath and working on a crossword puzzle to distract you from worrying about all you need to do.

Put your thoughts on lists, which will ease the burden on your mind.

Guests can pick a seat from a bowl.

On her Website, Cheryl gives lots of creative ideas for place cards. Alternatively, she suggests letting guests draw their seats from a bowl.

For example, make 2 name cards for each place setting. Instead of names, use words. So for Thanksgiving, you could use words like "turkey," "sweet potato," "stuffing." Then put the second set into a bowl, and whatever word you pick, that's where you sit.

Be prepared for conversation lags.

Many hosts read the newspaper carefully, which is a great source of conversation ideas. Cheryl suggests choosing a theme and writing different trivia about that theme on the back of each place card.

For a Meet and Potatoes theme, Cheryl used interesting facts about potatoes for the trivia. Guests discovered the the potato info, which inspired fun conversation.

For Thanksgiving, a fitting way to give thanks is playing Cheryl's Giving Thanks Game.

 Erase "best."

In other words, Cheryl is saying, don't have an expectation of perfection. I have a friend who walked down the aisle to get married, seething because the centerpieces weren't right. Gretchen Rubin shared a similar tip and other tips for happiness in my interview with her.

More entertaining ideas:

• Everything Thanksgiving, Including Vegetarian Recipes and Entertaining Tips
• Tips for Moist Turkey and Debunking Kitchen Myths
• Expecting Weekend Company? Easy Breakfast Ideas
• Traveling? Travel Food Ideas for Train, Plane or Highway 
• Plan a Fabulous Fiftieth Birthday or Other Celebration