5 Great Tips For Hosting An Amazing Barbecue

We hosted an early Father`s Day barbecue for friends this past Saturday and we had so much fun! We enjoyed delicious food, played a fun backyard game and had a bonfire that lasted until almost 10:30 pm. We were having such a blast that we really didn’t want the night to end, but one of our little guests had an early morning ball game and had to get some sleep. With Father’s Day next week, I want to share 5 great little tips for hosting an amazing Father`s Day barbecue for that special dad in your life. {And a special thank you to Canadian Tire for providing the grilling tools and backyard game which helped to make our BBQ evening such a success!}

1. Serve a Droolworthy Appetizer.
As soon as guests arrive, serve an appetizer that will knock their socks off. Choose something that is a fan favorite with men and for us that is jalapeno poppers, but I think that anything with bacon and cheese is sure to be a winner.

 2. Barbecue Lots of Meat.
Meat makes men happy! Barbecue a few choices to satisfy every taste.  We chose to serve  a roasted chicken, beef sliders and chicken wings. We started with oil & spices for a rub for the chicken and did a little rub-a-dub-dub.

Then we used this really nifty Cuisinart BBQ Beer Can Chicken Tool, which is a tool for cooking chicken over a cup of liquid {we used beer} to infuse the chicken with added flavour. The chicken roaster held the chicken perfectly and made the chicken moist and delicious. We used a meat thermometer to check the temperature of the chicken as it was cooking and it only took one hour to cook on the barbecue. The chicken roaster, if the cup for liquid is removed, can also be a grilling basket or wok…which is a genius idea for making this tool multi-functional. {Just look at the crispy and juicy chicken!}

The third entree served is a fan favourite at our house…chicken wings. We stared with an asian-inspired marinade and then drenched the wings. They smelled so good!

After half an hour of marinating,  the wings were transferred to the Cuisinart Chicken Wing Rack. I have to say that my husband loved the chicken wing rack because the wings cooked to crispy perfection without having to flip them or otherwise fuss over them. And the chicken skin was not ripped off by a sticky grill either.

 The wings disappeared the fastest when it was time to eat. Everyone loved their crispy goodness!

 Our barbecue was a hub for tasty & delicious grilling!

3. Serve Easy Roasted Veggies.
Roasted potatoes are easy when small potatoes are cut in half with some butter and spices added. Place on the grill in a pan until crispy and soft when speared with a fork. We served these with some sour cream at the table.

These inexpensive metal skewers held some other veggies that were grilled to round out our meal. I like to grill veggies on their own without meat so that you don’t end up with either under cooked meat, or dried out, overcooked veggies.

 When the veggies were ready, they were removed from the skewers and served in a bowl.

 4. Add A Little Decor.
To jazz things up a little, I created these sweet little tags and straw flags to help our celebration feel festive. The tags were tied around  the cutlery bundles.

And flag straws on striped paper straws helped to make the table look fun!

5. Play A Family Friendly Game.
After we ate, we had some fun playing the Coleman Bean Bag Toss. This game is perfect for all ages and it’s a lot harder than it looks let me tell you! With such busy schedules during the week, it was so nice to play a game and hang out and have fun!

The bean bag toss came with 2 boards that were ready to go on the lawn as soon as they came out of the box. Nice! And there were 8 bean bags to toss.

And one board even had a zippered storage pouch for the bean bags on the reverse side. The organizer in me loves this feature!

Overall, we had a wonderful evening with friends to celebrate Father’s Day. The company was amazing, the food was delicious and the bean bag toss game was great fun.

{This post was generously sponsored by Canadian Tire, but the opinions and images are my own. All of the grill top accessories and the bean bag toss used in this post can be found at Canadian Tire.For more information, please visit Canadian Tire.}