Ep 58: Hosting with Heart: Breaking the Rules of Traditional Entertaining

“The heart of hospitality isn’t about impressing others but making them feel welcome.”

— Saanya Ali

Summary of the episode

Welcome back to episode 58 of nosyAF!

In this episode of nosyAF: Conversations About Art, Activism, and Social Change, host Stephanie sits down with Saanya Ali, founder of Soiree, to discuss how she is hosting with heart and redefining hospitality through her creative and joyful approach to gatherings. Saanya shares how hosting can move beyond stress and formality, focusing instead on connection and generosity. From her international upbringing to her passion for food and community, Saanya highlights how hospitality can be as simple as pizza on the floor with friends, emphasizing that the experience is about people, not perfection.

Topics discussed:

🍜Hosting with heart means prioritizing connection over perfection and making everyone feel valued and at home.

🍕A dinner party doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be pizza on the floor—the connection matters," says Saanya.

🍽️ By breaking down the barriers to hosting, Saanya shows everyone can create memorable experiences, no matter the setting.

🥂Hospitality is about generosity and bringing people together, whether at a lavish event or a casual get-together.

All About Saanya:

Saanya Ali is a storyteller, writer, self-trained chef, and community-builder. She founded SOIRÉE, a platform that simplifies hosting for a new generation of entertainers. Born in Switzerland to South Asian parents and having traveled to over 65 countries, Saanya is fascinated by how food connects people across cultures and traditions. For her, a shared meal is more than just food—it's a way to break down barriers, tell stories, and bring people closer to their roots and communities.

After graduating from NYU's Gallatin School with a focus on Mixed Media Storytelling and Human Rights, Saanya worked at Well+Good before leaving in 2022 to focus full-time on SOIRÉE. The platform offers playful, practical solutions for Gen Z hosts, prioritizing authenticity, creativity, and accessibility over perfection.

At heart, Saanya is a curious third-culture kid who passionately believes in the power of food and connection. Her journey, from her multicultural upbringing to her extensive travels, has reinforced her belief that food is a universal language that can bridge cultural gaps and foster meaningful connection.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• SOIRÉE Website
• Sign up for the Saanya’s newsletter: SOIRÉE

Noteworthy quotes from this episode

“We dont need a run of show!”

"Food is a universal language—it brings people together, and that's what hospitality is all about."

"The heart of hospitality isn’t about impressing others but making them feel welcome.”

Connect with Saanya

Instagram: @justsoiree

Website: https://www.justsoiree.com/

Connect with Stephanie

Instagram: @stephaniegraham

Email: stephanie@missgraham.com

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Episode Credits:

Produced, Hosted, and Edited by Me, Stephanie (teaching myself audio editing!)

Lyrics: Queen Lex

Instrumental: Freddie Bam Fam

Hey, welcome. And welcome back to Nosy AF, the podcast where we dive into the lives of people who are shaping the world in their own creative and unexpected ways.

I'm your host, Stephanie. And today we're exploring something close to my heart, hospitality. But not just in a traditional sense.

I'm talking about the art of gathering, connection, and generosity.

Lately, I've been researching pageantry and hospitality, looking at everything from, like, the royal family to debutante balls, proms, and for years, I've wanted to host my own dinner parties. I mean, they're just such a great way to connect with people because let's be real, we all have to eat. Like, literally, we all have to eat.

So when I was introduced to Sani Ali through my network of friends, I was thrilled. Her company soiree is really redefining what it means to create experiences that are generous, thoughtful, and full, full of care.

So in today's episode, we're going to dig into Sonia's approach to hosting and why it's so much more than just throwing a good party. But first, you gotta play my theme song. So let's get right into it. And welcome to no Taf, my friends.

Gotta get up, get up tell the whole world you a winner, winner vision never saw with a mission in the cause what you doing, how you doing?

What you doing and who you are flex yourself and press yourself on check yourself don't work yourself if you know me then you know that I be knowing what's up, Stephanie Graham is nosy as.

Okay, so let's get this party started. Sonia, welcome to nosy Af.

Hi, Stephanie.

So happy that you are here. So I love your platform soiree. I think it is so helpful.

And the first question I have for you is, did you create it out of frustration of maybe going to too many dinner parties that just weren't done to where you think, to like your specifications?

No, I am not picking. A dinner party can be pizza on the floor if that's what's called for.

First of all, thank you so much for having me, and I'm so glad you liked the platform, but essentially it came out of a few different things. So number one, I have a very international upbringing.

I was born in Switzerland, moved to France, moved back to Switzerland, grew up in DC around a lot of internationally minded people, south asian family. And one thing thats the ultimate connector is food. No matter where you are in the world, no matter where youre from, everyones got to eat.

And so this idea of connection and community around food is something thats always been cored to who I am and how I think about the world and its so interconnected. Food and culture, food and fashion, food and art. Theres so many ways into it.

But I saw this need, especially during pandemic where the generation undermine my generation. And Gen Z wanted to host and wanted to build these communities and connections.

But the idea of throwing a dinner party or any sort of themed event, whatever it may be, was intimidating or inaccessible or you were met with these.

Well, one day, or when I make this much, when I have this space, when I have a matching set of plates, when I learn how to cook, when I know there were all of these impediments to doing it, and I was thinking about it, I'm like, it can be pizza on the floor. And that's a big party. It's food, friends and fun. That's all you really need. And so created soiree as an answer to the stress.

So soiree is dedicated to simplifying the stress of hosting. And it could be the most elevated. We threw a surrealist ball and it could be a slumber party with your girls. Whatever it may be.

Making something an occasion is fun. Making new friends over sharing a meal is fun. All of these things shouldn't be. There shouldn't be barriers to entry.

Yeah. And it does feel like I'm really, like, I follow a bunch of, like, homemakers on Instagram, and this is like, not the tradwives.

That's like a whole other role of, like, homemakers. But it seems like, similar to the art world. There's like, different worlds, like, inside, you know, different art worlds.

And maybe there's, like, different homemaking, but it does feel, like, not accessible. It does feel overwhelming.

It's very removed from the idea of homemaking, and I think that lives in its own separate world. But the idea of hospitality and generosity of spirit is different. You don't have to cook to have a dinner party.

You don't have to have people in your house to have a dinner party. So there's such a spectra.

I think there are a lot of these internalized ideas of like, oh, a dinner party means two forks on either side, and I need to have this space and I need to have five courses and all of that. But it doesnt. You could have a dinner party at a restaurant and you rent out the room, you could have a dinner party.

I had a 40 person italian riviera themed picnic in Central park. It can be anywhere. And I think also the idea of a dinner party is kind of poo pooed a little bit where it's like, okay, whatever, it's a party.

It's a party. Well, there's a whole industry around events.

And so that's part of the consulting that I do is working with different brand startups, individuals sometimes, but more often companies, to figure out how to host an event that combines elegance and play in a way that aligns with their KPI's. So they have a goal that they want to get out of whatever event we're pulling together. What do we need to do to get there?

What are the right questions to ask? How can we make this different from every other pr event marketing event that's happened and make it fun and still memorable, but very goal oriented?

So there's a whole spectrum. It can go from hosting at home to hosting a launch for a new app.

Yeah, yeah. How did you get into hosting and being interested in this, besides the travel?

Like, you had this great life of traveling, but that's still, you know, you still didn't have to be into dinner parties.

That is a great question. I think part of it is my dad always calls me a coconut brown on the outside, white on the inside.

And I growing up in Switzerland, in the US, that is an insecurity of mine, where I very much connect to the european side of my upbringing more than the desi side.

But one thing that I'm so proud of about my brown heritage is the hospitality and the generosity and the way that the Miis and like, it's more than etiquette, it's caretaking and respect, and I want to make you feel at home and anything that's mine is yours. That's something that I so value and admire and respect from my cultural heritage. And I think especially when you're a third culture kid.

So I born in one place, live in another from another, you have to have your little touchstones that you're like, this is my way in to how I connect to my culture and that level of hospitality. And just true, like, my home is your home feeling is something that I really latched onto.

And then seeing my mom host and my grandparents host, and then in a very technical way, working in the wellness industry for a long time and going to every pr event and every restaurant opening and every launch event, which a lot of them, some of them were good, but they get to feel quite technical and performative. And the old school elegance of how to carry a room, lead a room, hold a space, felt lost where it kind of felt like you were in school.

Someone's like we're going to go through the run of show for the evening. We don't need to run a show or do the next step and we'll follow along. Or like I'll be your point person for the we don't need a point person.

No point.

People like, you're the one to greet me at the door and you do so warmly with no stress and I don't know that you've sweat putting the work into this. I will assume that you're the head.

So I think yeah, part of it was by cultural heritage and part of it is just kind of feeling a bit frustrated with the, the technicalness of events now. They're just kind of like, do you.

Think hosting is like a lost art?

That was one of the first taglines of sorry, it was reviving the lost art of entertaining. So 100% you took the words out of my mouth.

There's an art to making do with what you have and figuring out creative ways, especially like living in New York. If youre in a studio apartment and you cant fit your twelve best friends there, there are ways around this. You can do things elsewhere.

So the idea of kind of finagling and making do with what youve got, but the barrier to entry in terms of like well im at a fancy work dinner and I dont know what fork to use or how to introduce my boss to this contact that they need to meet all of those little intimidations thats the goal is to make that not scary because for so long the idea of etiquette or any of these skill sets were so reserved for one group of people and that ostracizes everyone else. That makes everyone else feel a little bit dumb.

And thats not fair because if youre not in the room where the lessons are being taught, why would you be expected to know them? And no one has the time to go do all of the reading. So in this case I'm doing the research.

I definitely can't call myself an expert naturally, but doing the research and then putting it in bullet points and making it a little witty and satirical and hehe and young, I could see like.

A sort eight charmed school, finishing school or whatever, but maybe even like thinking about your philosophy then that a dinner party can be pizza on the floor. Maybe we should ban this idea of charm school.

I just had a conversation about this because we were at one of my dear friends houses in the UK and we were talking about the idea of etiquette and I am the mom friend of the group and forever have been, have gotten mothers, had Mother's Day text since I was 15. I love. I. I don't even know if I want kids, but I'm very maternal. The idea of etiquette and manners and that's how things are done.

If there were to be anyone at the table that wants that and values that, it would be me. That said, I think there's a line between having good manners and having respect for your elders and carrying yourself with grace at that.

And only sip out of the same corner of your glass or put your napkin on your chair with the left hand, like whatever. All of these little rules that are meant to ostracize versus little additions that are meant to show respect, those are different.

I feel like there is nice to have those rules, but then you're right. I guess rules are made to be broken as well.

Yeah, I think there's balance. I very much do some of them, but some, I think, yeah. It's just so rooted in white class system.

Yeah. It makes me wonder what other countries might think of, you know, etiquette, that's.

The other thing where the very stereotypical english etiquette, like the charm school etiquette, completely different from etiquette in Japan or etiquette in Bangladesh, depending on where you are, down to the amount of food you should leave on your plate, should you leave one bite to show that you werent famous? Should you finish it all to show that it was really good? Should you leave a little bit of everything to show that you tried everything?

The rules differ from place to place, but this kind of western ideology is the one that has become.

Yeah, thats terrible.

So then youve traveled all over then, have you, with soiree, youve maybe put together your own style of how you do things, of picking little pieces of.

Each place a little bit, I think. I mean, when it comes to etiquette, it's kind of take it or leave it.

I'm not going to enforce any part of it, but when it comes to tablescaping, for example, I just spent a lot of time in these beautiful gardens in the UK, and using fresh flowers is something that I would do there when you have access to them. That said, in New York, when a bouquet of hydrangeas is $28, probably not going to get three of them.

And so here it's going to be like, oh, well, I can get an orange and dry them in the oven and have that as part of the tablescape and then go scour the housing works across the street and find really cute little teacups that are all different and use that. So using different learnings from different places and definitely different cooking styles, that's something. I love food history and food science.

And the kitchen is my flow state playground. Will everything work out every time? No, but it is where I play and experiment and learn and is my favorite.

Just swat about, put pinches of things in different pots and I love it. So all of the different learnings come together in the design of the event and in the food, for sure.

Majority of the work you do, you have soiree, which is your brand, and then you have the newsletter, which everyone should subscribe to. It is really, really helpful. And it's very funny, it's very witty.

Thank you.

And, like, actionable.

And actionable. Part of what I do. I've been a writer my entire life. That is first and foremost what I am as a storyteller. A writer.

But my newsletter, oh, my God, if I could do that all day, please, everyone, subscribe to the newsletter. So I could do that all day.

Yeah. And then you will do events for folks. Cause you just said you had the Italian Riviera.

I was just gonna say, like, did you fund that or was that like a corporate event?

Good question. So, yeah, as you mentioned, soiree is the overarching brand, and the three buckets that fall under it are the content.

So that's the newsletter, the website, and the social platforms of all of the how tos, how to feed a big group, how to seat people, how to introduce people, how to tablescape a la la, then the consulting, which we talked about before, is just very goal oriented, numbers focused, how to host elegantly, productively, and then the supper club we brought in last November. And I realized that initially.

So I was building entirely in the tech space, first as a SaaS platform, then using a lot of AI, and I found myself click clacking behind a computer for so long that I wasn't putting the, I wasn't practicing what I was preaching.

And so the supper club, we really pushed the boundaries of design and experimental costumes, decor, just make it really fun and an escape from reality. So sometimes I work with my dear friend Claire, who's an incredible chef based in Brooklyn, and sometimes with different brands.

So we have had a bunch of brands come in as gift bag sponsors or decor sponsors, and then also with other startups and companies. So the Italian Riviera themed one was in collaboration with this company called Matchbox, which is essentially a matchmaking software.

And everyone got to know each other. Chitter chatter throughout the course of the evening. And at the end of the event, they got a text with their most compatible match at the event.

So that was. It was fun. Everyone had a really good time.

But in terms of funding it, all of the supper clubs are ticketed, so tickets range from $75 to $200 per person. But you're getting food and drink and true experience, and I think people, especially boys, want an excuse to get dressed up.

The most recent one that we hosted was a Gatsby themed event, and all of the girls, they understood the assignment. No questions were asked. Everyone had full rented flappers, dresses, pearls galore, black tie. Amazing.

I had nine of the boys message me in the three days prior being like, would it be weird if I wore a tuxed? Can I wear this? Can I send you a picture of what I'm thinking of wearing? People want occasions. People want somewhere to wear.

They're like, oh, I have nowhere to wear that whatever it is thing.

They want to play, they want whimsy, they want pomp and circumstance a little bit, because that's so no one dresses for the theater anymore or dinner.

Yeah, people really do like having places to go, don't they?

Like, yeah, pandemic where we didn't have that. And now my friend Julie was over yesterday, and we were talking about how we're activity people who want to date activity people.

We're looking for someone that wants to not like, oh, let's just, fine, be a homebody. But let's watercolor. Let's be. Let's play a game. Let's do something. Or you live in a world, go out and see it. Go meet strangers and do things.

So I think there's this want for activity, this want for occasion that there's so many companies working to meet right now, which is really amazing.

So if me and my listeners want to be little soirees, is there a toolkit that you think. Cause I feel like this is all very fun to you. Like, I feel this is your play. I love that you said you wanna marry elegance and play.

I'm like, okay, you are my kind of girl.

So if I am working and I know when I have, like, my own version of a supper club, what's like a little kit or something, I could have a quick little recipe that you have as a go to for a nice evening.

Yes. So on the website, I have two sections. I have one. Actually, three. I have one that's hosting calendar.

So it'll tell you if you're planning something far in advance, what to do two weeks before, a week before, an hour before, the minute before people arrive. And you can take off all of the steps as you do them.

There's also a section next to it called the Procrastinators Guide, where it has just a list of all of the resources you could need if you're trying to do it. A pinch hitter dinner party. So places to order food, order flowers, Amazon things that will ship the next day, everything.

That's if you procrastinated. And then I have, like, a guide of do's and do nots, kind of a cheat sheet for hosting all on the site, but also one of the most popular newsletters.

I think this was the third or fourth was called the art of a shitty dinner party. And dinner parties, like we were talking about before, have this reputation of opulence and excess and performance, which I love.

That's why I do what I do.

Of course.

Of course. The shitty dinner party has its place.

And that means, number one, you're wearing your bodega clothes and you're telling your friends that are coming over. Bodega clothes are the clothes that you can wear in your house. In your house. So to your nearest bodega.

So however many blocks it is to get your bacon, egg, and cheese, yes, they probably have holes in it. There's probably a track t shirt from high school. So bodega clothes. Number two, if you want to ask someone to bring something, let them. That's okay.

If you. You don't have to clean your bedroom. No one's going into it.

There are all of these little things that get in the way of hosting a dinner party that are part of the art of a shitty dinner party. People are allowed to help clean up at a shitty dinner party. You could do it all together, say, mamma mia, make it fun.

If you want to have quiet time afterwards and not play a game or a sit around and finish the bottle of wine, having some serious conversation about art or politics, scroll through phones together, that's fine. There's the idea of having so many rules.

Sometimes you have to give yourself the occasion for which to break them, and the rules have their time in place. If you say, this is shitty dinner, they all go out the window. Not for all the time, but for that.

Yeah, I like that. I like saying shitty dinner. Do you host a lot? Like, since now this is your business, do you still find yourself hosting or.

Good question. So the supper club, we try to do once or twice a month, and that is just an adrenaline high.

Go, wow, that's a lot. Twice a month.

Wow, it's a lot. It was once and now there's more interest, excitingly. So now we're trying to scale it up.

But when it comes to hosting, hosting, I do, I think I allow myself more allowances with it. Where, like I said, I'm the mom.

And so instead of oftentimes me inviting people, people will just say like, hey, I'm in the area and I'll check find friends on my phone. I'm like, you're not. You just want to know what's for dinner. And so people will just come over and we'll have more casual.

And if we want to do a little bit of a tablescape, a little bit of pomp and circumstance, sure. But it's much cozier and homeier. Yesterday I made three kinds of fish just because my best friend was coming over.

And that was my activity for the evening. And we got to enjoy that together and sit and chat for 5 hours straight, which was lovely.

But I think when the supper clubs are so produced, the dinner parties are less produced. That said, like I mentioned, I was back in the UK with some of my dear friends and I was cooking for 14.

And in that case, I enlist my friends to make a little bouquet for the table or lay it nicely, pick a nice wine, whatever that may be, because I'm like, okay, if I'm putting in a 14 people of cooking, we're making this an event and that makes it fun as well. That's part of the spectacle and the holiday of it all. And we all love, we all love sharing meals.

Yeah, that's really nice. I feel like, dang, if somebody told me they were over, look, they're just gonna get some Popeyes chicken.

Like I said, this is my play.

Yeah, yeah.

I wouldn't say is my play. Hosting is kind of what I feel a little bit is my calling. Like it combined my maternal instincts and my love of coziness and warmth and hospitality.

But cooking, not my calling. I am not a natural chef. I love cooking and I'm not bad at it, but I like being good at things. But it's so, that's so relaxing for me.

It's cooking and running are the two times in my entire existence where I can actually stop thinking and I deal with a lot of mental struggles. And if I have the chance to stop the racing anxieties and come up with a really lovely seed tuna afterwards, so be it.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm talking about. If you are calmed by such a glamorous activity, running.

This is not glamorous, though.

Okay, yeah, maybe running. Maybe running. But y'all look really cute out there, though. All the runners I see, y'all look really cute out there.

So with the dinners, it feels like you're like, sort of building community. Does the community just stop there after dinner? Or like, what have you seen in terms of community building with the dinners that you're creating?

I think specifically with the soiree dinners versus the brand stuff.

Well, they kind of go hand in hand. Like, we have brands come in to be a part of the Suaree dinners. They get really good content out of it as well. But that's not all the time.

It's just sometimes. But we have found, especially more recently, where people are buying tickets and coming alone.

Whereas initially it was like a friend of a friend of a friend. So you have some sort of connection to someone else there.

Now it's a lot of strangers that come by themselves and with the intention of making friends and meeting people. We've seen people after the dinner all be like, oh, should we go to a jazz club? Should we go to a comedy show?

And then a friend group is formed, or people have asked in the Luma invitation being like, can you make a group chat for everyone? We talked about XYZ, or can you connect me to so and so? It's a lot of the, like, the starts of friendships, these friendship meet cutes.

That's another one of the friendship and non friendship that was one of the newsletters that I wrote was supper clubs are replacing swipe culture because people want to meet. People want to meet cute, they want to meet in real life. And this gives the occasion for that to happen in a very unintimidating way.

It's not someone approaching you at a bar. It is someone that bought a ticket to be at an event that is dedicated to meeting people.

And there's a level of safety, there's a level of intentionality where it's like, we're all here for the same reason.

So, yeah, the communities that are formed, it's also there's some guests who I met through Soiree or started following me, and we became Instagram friends, and they've come to every supper club since. And that's just amazing to have the recurring people, your regulars. The regulars, exactly.

I love that. I love that. That's really cool. So I feel like we sort of covered this, but I'm still going to ask, what do you find?

Is I have two questions in this is what do you find is the most rewarding part of, like all of soiree, of all of your brand? And then I was wondering if you could maybe share like a personal highlight that, like hosting, like this part of.

I see it as like community building. Like hosting community building has been a part of your life.

Well, the joke answer to the first one was the title of the first youth letter, which was the stuff we do for validation. And there's. This is just a common thing amongst hosts, and just like a very hehe. Response is the validation it feeds you. It's amazing.

And I think more realistically, it's giving people a sense of play and occasion and a space where you can let your guard down because you're not at a cocktail event, you're at a dinner party, you're all gonna be eating together. It's going to feel more intimate when you're in that space.

And the connections that are made are going to be more true than if you're just meeting at a bar. So the most rewarding part for me is the kind of curating a space for connection.

My favorite part of what I do is the writing and shooting the events of used to be a photographer, and so finding creative ways to portray a tablescape or a meal is always fun for me. And then the. What was the second question?

My second question was like, if you could share a personal story that highlights the impact of hosting and community building in your life.

Yeah. The one, the most recent one is the one that immediately comes to mind.

And this was after the Italian Riviera themed picnic, which was a matchmaking picnic, but it didn't feel matchmakery. It was cool and fun. And it was through this software that was created.

The most common response, both at the end of the evening and in the messages that I got afterwards, was how unintimidating it felt and everyone really valued.

I think one thing that is very core to me, and any event that I have hands in at all, is when you're greeting people, they'll match your heart rate when they're walking in. So if you're frazzled and if you seem like, oh, these are all things that are going wrong, and this is so stressful, and this was so hard.

Well, if this is that hard, why'd you put it on? If you are instead calm and collected and graceful and I. Maybe on the inside it's all crazy, but you have that heart rate.

They've come in from commuting from wherever after a long day of work, they'll match your heart rate. And the other part is instead of, hi, nice to meet you. My name is, or who are you? Or what do you do? Oh, my God. I'm so glad you made it.

Thanks so much for getting, like, you start halfway into the conversation as if you already know the person that puts them at ease so they don't have to. It's not an interview. They don't have to prove themselves and why they're there. You're just excited that they're there.

You can learn their name in a few minutes, and you can learn what they do in a few minutes or through the course of the evening, if that feels right.

But setting people at ease initially is something that's so integral and I think is so easy to lose when you have to check people off a list at the door or you have that sort of technicalness to it. That can happen. That will happen. Just let people settle into the space.

And so I think people recognizing that and really valuing it, which in my head, it's a secret.

I don't realize that people notice those things, but they were like, this could have been so awkward and this could have been so intimidating and uncomfortable and forced, but you were greeted with an aperol spritz in Central park and complimented on an outfit and made to feel like everything's okay and with a hug, as opposed to like, hi, who are you?

Yeah, hi, who are you? What do you do? I hate that.

Why are you here? What are you doing here? What brings you? It's a lot.

Relax.

Relax and learn later. There's a whole event ahead of you.

So, yeah, that I think people recognizing that and then maybe the next time that they host something, whether it's a work meeting or a birthday party, maybe that will pass on. And you're putting people at ease implicitly later on.

So what is your dream for soiree? Is it to teach us how to have our own soirees?

Participate in you?

Like, what's your dream for it? I don't even to answer for you, you're like, dream big of it.

That's a good question.

So I'm very much an ideas person, and that is, I would love to build Soiree and have it kind of be a self running machine at some point and then get back to just hosting for myself. But I think for Soiree, one of the core things that I would love is to have that.

I would never call myself an expert, but have that be my area of expertise where I create tiktoks and Instagram reels of fun ways to host fun condiments to buy creative things to tablescape, have those kind of quick, quippy video lessons, have the newsletter beverage monetized, and have that be kind of a claim to fame for Soiree and what it is. I would love to write a book. I have a few that have been in the works for seven years now, and I would love to have that.

So it's really just building the brand awareness around what Soiree is so that the avenues of social newsletter and hopefully publishing can be opened. One idea that I'm incorporating is creating sort of cheat sheets for very specific mock dinner parties. So we're talking about homemakers.

Like if Nora Smith were to host a dinner party, this is what she would do if Taylor Swift were to host a dinner party, this is what she'd do if Michelle Obama were to, whatever it may be, creating these kind of mocks and putting those on the paid side of the newsletter so that you can just copy the guide. But yeah, I'd love to live in the space of dinner party content and food content. Yeah. And writing. Yeah.

If I'm coming home, could you give me like a quick little tablescape I could do or like something I could have on hand?

Yeah, tablescape. The easiest thing that you can do is everyone has vegetables in there. I fridge to some extent, fruit or veg. So pick a color.

So for example, I'm looking at an orange candle right now, so I'll pick orange. If you have some oranges, if you have time to slice them thin, put them in the oven, dry them, you can scatter those about or put one on each plate.

If you don't, put some oranges in a bowl or put them down the center of your table.

And then there's this thing that we did at the surrealist party where instead of having flowers in vases, we had carrots with their big green stems coming out and it seemed a little absurd, but in the coolest way. So put some carrots in a vase, put celery in a vase, put radishes in a glass so you can see the colors of the different radishes.

There's so much creativity and arthem and curiosity to play with in nature, especially when it comes to food, that there's so many things that you can do with what you have and not have to go buy circus themed tablescape you can play. The easiest thing is to pick a color and then also shop your own home.

That's one of the lessons that I have in the newsletter where if you go into your makeup drawer, you probably have some sort of products that are orange. If you just go full maximalist and put those products out and then put the things that you find in your kitchen out and then maybe these things.

There was one time I made napkin holders just with vintage books and put the napkins inside.

Oh, okay. I like that. I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing.

Yeah. It's just playing with what you've got, I think. Yeah.

And also having less time and having a, like, trying to do something in a pinch does force you to be more creative, both with food and with decor. And what it unlocks in your mind is this kind of, like, game show challenge. Oh, like, what can I find?

I love that.

Thank you for that, because, yeah, it's nice to. I wouldn't even have thought of that because you think of, like, z gallery, like, you know what I mean?

Like table runner, matching plates or whatever.

But this, I love, it gives us, like, you know, it does give, like, a maximalist, eccentric vibe, you know, right off the bat, which is already gonna create a different environment than folks might genuinely expect. Thank you.

Thank you, y'all. Isn't Sanya just the sweetest? I truly enjoyed talking to her. I mean, anyone who can blend elegance with playfulness, we love to see that. We love to see that.

Sonia's business foraye is like her personal canvas. She teaches us how to host, throw dinner parties, and entertain with creativity and charm through her whimsical writing and photography.

Plus, she gave me a much needed correction separating the ideas of homemaking and entertaining. I definitely, definitely, definitely appreciated that perspective. One big takeaway from Sonia is this, forget the rules and just have a good time.

I could have talked to her for hours. And who knows? Maybe we'll continue the conversation. There's just so much more to explore. I was really curious about her hosting don'ts, though.

Or maybe a story about being a bad host. But maybe she'll share that on her website soon. And if you have those stories, I'd love to hear them too.

Maybe I'll even share a few of my own in a bonus episode, because I definitely have stories of bad hosting. What is wrong with y'all? Y'all don't read soiree. I love that Sonia has such a passion for hosting, cooking, and being a mom to her friends.

I'm so happy that she extended that warmth to all of us. What a dream. What a true treat. We even played with the idea of having a sorry in Chicago. Or, hey, maybe she can come to. Your city or even your country.

I'm looking at you. South Africa, y'all. I got listeners in South Africa. You better hit her up. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did.

This has been another episode of Nosy aF. I'm your host, Stephanie Graham. What did you think about today's conversation? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Head over to the nosy AF website for all the show notes related to this episode. You can also find me on Instagram. What would you know?

Or online@missgram.com where you can sign up for my newsletter, where I share exclusive updates about my studio practice, as well as this podcast. Until next time, y'all stay curious and take care. Bye.