On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with author, culinary producer, and certified legendary party person, Courtney McBroom. We talk about her new cookbook Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations, co-written with her best friend and fellow party person, Brie Larson. The book is a love letter to creative celebration, making space for joy, and giving yourself permission to host however you want. Courtney shares her Five Rules for How to Celebrate the Little Things, from picking the perfect music and lighting, to being open to messing things up, and to aligning good vibes with small moments. Whether you're a solo host or part of a party-planning duo, this one’s packed with smart, elevated, heartfelt advice for making any gathering feel good.
Celebrating the little things has kept me grounded these past few months. After the fire, after the stress, after everything, I found myself holding onto small joys more tightly than ever. A Tuesday night dinner with friends, a good tennis session with my kids, and a nice stroll with my wife & the dogs. These tiny moments of gathering have shifted my whole outlook, and Courtney gets that better than anyone. This episode is a reminder that we don’t need an excuse to connect, only a little intention. I walked away inspired to keep throwing parties, especially it’s just my family and me making pizza in the backyard.
Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with author, culinary producer, and legendary party person Courtney McBroom, whose new book Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations, that she co-wrote with her best friend and fellow party person Brie Larson, is out everywhere October 23rd. First, today she shares her five rules on how to celebrate the little things. We chat about how to give yourself grace when hosting, to be open to trying new things and not afraid to mess them up, and how a great aesthetic is just as important as great food. So let's get into the rules.
Courtney, so good to see you. Congratulations on your book, Party People. Thank you. It's a gorgeous book. It's a fun book. It's one that makes me want to open my doors and welcome in the people. That's the whole reason why we wrote it. So I'm glad I worked on you.
In your mind, what defines a party person? Here's the great thing about being a party person—it’s that literally everyone is a party person. It takes all kinds of things. It's genetically coded in our DNA to get together with other people and be around each other in real life. And so I would argue that even if you're sitting here before me today thinking to yourself, "I'm not a party person," I would argue that that's incorrect. It really is a state of mind.
You wrote this book and have thrown quite a few parties with your best friend, Brie Larson. Throwing a party by yourself versus throwing a party with another person, even writing a book by yourself versus writing with another person, is a different approach. How do you compromise when throwing a party with a partner?
Working with Brie specifically, we haven't really had to compromise. Because we've been doing this for years since we met, throwing parties together. We're both hardcore party people to the max. There was no real compromise so far. I mean, knock on wood, we're about to go on the press tour. So far, it's been really great. Compromise in general—that's something you have to do with everyone no matter what. If you have any other person in your life, unless you live by yourself in the woods and never speak to anyone, you're going to have to compromise with someone at some point.
Brie and I specifically work together really well because I have more of a food background. So I handle most of the intense cooking and food prep and all that stuff. She'll handle getting the decorations and write out the menus and do the party game aspect of it. And of course, we cross over. Of course. And help each other in that. But we found our own natural niches in that way. And so it was really perfect. As a person who's thrown a lot of solo parties, it is very nice to have a partner in crime. It makes all the difference when you don't have to plan and host a party yourself. Yeah, helpful.
According to you, everyone is a party person, but there are some people who may have never thrown a party or are trying to elevate their party game. What is the best piece of advice you've received or given?
As a person who's made a living out of throwing parties, something that I've learned along the way—the hard way—is to not take it so gosh dang seriously. Make it easy on yourself. If you don't have the bandwidth to do a 10-course meal with 20 of your best friends, invite three people over and order pizza. I love that. It doesn't matter how intense or how far you go. The most important thing is being around people, whether that's your family or your chosen family.
My place is really small, so I can't have huge parties. I'll fit four people and we'll have a dance party in my living room. Alzheimer, yeah. But I definitely grew up with Martha Stewart, who I love and adore. I grew up watching her and being like, everything must be perfect and all this stuff and thinking I could never. And then I realized slowly over time, oh, but I can. And it actually doesn't have to be perfect.
This idea of finding the appropriate party that fits perfectly into your life is a really good approach to living, which is why I'm so excited to talk about your five rules on how to celebrate the little things, which is really something that you can incorporate into your daily life. The idea of understanding how not to stress yourself out is a big part of starting to celebrate your daily life. What's your rule number one?
Rule number one is be easy on yourself. There's a reason why Thanksgiving happens but once a year. We don't have the bandwidth. Not everything has to be some huge blowout with the perfect flower arrangement and the perfect place settings. Let people help you.
I remember reading back in the good old days, Emily Post—the etiquette of parties—which is like, never let your party guests help you clean up. I say, absolutely. I have one friend, her name's Erin, and she legitimately loves to clean. And anytime she comes over, I know that she will start doing the dishes and refuse to let anyone help. She always says, it's better to do them when you're drunk than when you're hungover the next day. And I'm like, you know what Erin, you're right. That's a bonus rule.
People also really love to cook. If you're making a lasagna and you have friends come over, let them chop an onion. Help your friends help you. Put them to work.
One of the greatest pleasures about bringing celebration and partying into your daily life is that impromptu, inviting people over, we're just going to get together, we're going to see each other, which you talk about in your rule number two.
Rule number two is don't overthink it. Literally anything can be a party. It doesn't have to be some huge, we got engaged, I'm having a baby, I'm graduating. All of those can most certainly be parties, but you can also be like, oh my God, I found the perfect pair of jeans. Or my best friend finally broke up with that stupid dum-dum they were dating that everyone hated and she finally saw her worth. Literally all the little things that happened throughout our day, throughout our lives, those are all worth celebrating. We have to find those small moments and really lift them up.
We've been taught as a culture to push things down and to not celebrate those things and to always be working, always be achieving, and that's not what life's about. One of the parties that we have in the book is called a "brag and complain" party. I love that. It's so fun. Just invite however many friends you want over, sit around a table, you can have little paddles or you can just raise your hands that either say "brag" or "complain." Everyone literally takes turns being like, I have a brag or I have a complaint. And you complain about something and it can be as banal and silly as you want it to be.
And in the very beginning, people are a little shy and like, what? This is weird. I couldn't possibly. But then by the end, everyone's like, I have a brag. I have a complaint. And it's so fun and you feel so great afterwards. And just being heard by your peers about the small little things that you want to talk about is so important. And it's not something that we really get to do that much.
Having that comfortability and having that openness when you have people over and you get into the habit of hosting and throwing parties at your house is great because it allows you a lot more swings or a lot more at-bats, which is something that I think about when you talk about your rule number three.
Don't be afraid to f**k something up. Go in there and do it. Try the hard recipe. Do the thing that you aren't too sure if it's going to work out, but try it anyway. Ideally, you're throwing little parties constantly every day. Celebrating the thing. So it's okay if you do something and the soufflé falls. The most important thing is surround yourself with people that you love and care about and who care about you and love you and share that space together.
Taking it a step further, don't be afraid to say or do the hard things. Parties are a liminal space, and we live in a society that's so shame-filled these days, and there's so many people pointing fingers and trolls. I really want to drive home how important it is that we use these places of communion to hold grace for each other and to let people be their wild, messy selves without either feeling ashamed yourself or making other people feel ashamed. It really is so important to have these safe spaces in real life and to be allowed to feel like you can mess up, whether that's messing up the soufflé or calling someone the wrong name.
What I like about this mindset of celebrating the little things is that even though you can be easygoing about it, even though there's room to f**k things up, you still need to bring some intention to make it feel like you put some effort into it, either for yourself or for those surrounding you. What's your rule number four?
My fourth rule is think of your party as three acts with a little activity as a through line. What I've discovered always works best is act one: you have a welcome cocktail plus some light snacks. Easy. It could be like a bowl of chips. So that way when people show up, they have something to drink and something to snack on.
Then you have part two, which would be the main dishes, the main crux of the meal. And I usually like to do beer and wine with that. You can keep serving cocktails if you like. I also recommend batching out cocktails so you're not making cocktails for everyone all night.
Part three is after dinner where you're just hanging around the table. I like to offer like an Amaro or a digestif, dessert if you're so inclined.
The one thing that I found is most important is having some sort of uniting theme that can run through the whole party, whether that's an actual theme or something as simple as, "Hey, I'm having a dinner party, come over, and the theme is wear something that you love that's in your closet that you never get to wear." Brie loves to have a little side table with a puzzle on it so that people can go do a puzzle during the party. Something that can help those with social anxiety, give something to talk about, something to do, so it's not just a bunch of small talk. If you have something that kind of unites everyone together at the party, it gives everyone something to rally around—besides just being there to eat, which is great too—but there's so many different things you can do activity-wise, puzzle-wise, game-wise, and it's fun.
I love this idea of having activities because it adds a little bit of joy and fun, especially if you're celebrating every day. And while cooking for people and feeding them is always the thing that I think about the most, your fifth rule deals with these two style elements to make sure that your hosting is always a hit.
As important as the food is—and you know I think food is very important—I know, I know, I know. Anytime I roll up to a dinner party and the light is really bright, no one looks good right now. I know I don't either. So the lighting needs to be good, a little bit dim, unless you're at a daytime party, that's different. And also music. Nothing ruins a party more than if it's really bad music or the music's way too loud and you can't talk to anyone. I would almost say I would rather no music than really loud music. Fair.
Think about the music that you want to play. Make a little playlist beforehand and set it at a reasonable level. Unless you're having a dance party, in which case pump it up.
Courtney, congratulations on the book. It comes out October 21st. Pre-orders available now wherever you buy books. Yes. Support your local bookstore.
I know you've been posting videos of the two of you cooking from the book and some also fun promo videos, but then also there's a book tour. Where can they go to come out and see you two chat it up and party with you in real life?
We'll be doing a lot of dates in New York, a lot of stuff in LA, and then we're planning everything else in between right now. So I would say follow Party People on Instagram or me or Brie. We'll be letting everyone know where to go and when as we get closer.
So excited for this book to come out, especially right in time for the holiday season. It is going to hopefully inspire a lot of people to embrace their inner party person. Yes.
Well, I'll definitely see you in LA at some of the events. And cheers. Cheers to you. Thanks for having me on. This was really fun.
