Rusted Pipes and Homemade Chocolate Sauce: Making Do

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Right now I'm smack in the middle of my three-day weekend, All of us - my husband and our two sons - are home from school and work. Tomorrow, we will host friends for  ice cream on our front porch. Our home is never really ready for guests but we invite them anyway. I'm making chocolate sauce. This photograph is from Susan Branch's blog; my counters are stained and I don't have a pretty copper pot. I'm making the chocolate sauce anyway, and later, I will make caramel sauce.

Yes, I expect our gathering will be lovely with lots of friends with younger kids. Our house is anything but lovely. Yesterday, until we hollered at our teens to clean the porch, the enclosed front porch still had the Christmas tree stand on it and a pile of pretty white lights. The porch was also home to a bike rack, and two of our older son's bikes, as well as a slew of bike repair equipment. The front porch, the entrance to our home, is not exactly inviting.

Meanwhile, while making homemade fudge sauce and caramel sauce for the party this morning, I discovered the kitchen sink pipes are rusted out. In other words, the pipes are gone. So we've put a big bowl in the sink and will be calling a plumber.

But life goes on. I know my friends do not care about the water-rotted cabinet under the sink, the grease marks on our hardwood floors from our son's bike repairs and the mismatched spoons we will serve our ice cream with.

Hospitality is not the same as entertaining. If I waited until our house were picture perfect before inviting anyone in, our children and theirs would be grown. Now is the time to have fun and make memories.