Alfresco Dining: The Ultimate Holiday Entertainment

With October behind you, it’s time to embrace Thanksgiving and the upcoming holiday season. This year, do the extraordinary—take your feast and festivities outside. It’s not only doable for those living on the West Coast, but just as possible for those residing on the East Coast. With premium outdoor heating options and hi-tech heated seating recourses, year-round outdoor bliss is feasible anywhere. Anytime. Any season.

The latest luxury backyards include more than just an oversized fire pit. Outdoor entertainment areas are being outfitted with everything from movie theaters to high-end appliances to radiant-heat light fixtures. Custom cabinetry, a full bar, a pizza oven and a beer tap are also some outside luxury perks that also keep the party happening comfortably in the open air.

Below are some motifs from which you can choose to create the ultimate outdoor dining experience that you, your family and friends will never forget. Take Thanksgiving outdoors this year and make it the most memorable gathering yet to be had. Gone are the holidays that involve being cooped up inside with football on the television. The festivities, including watching football on a large movie screen, is bigger and better outside. With, of course, no luxe amenity left inside.

Rustic

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If you prefer resort-like living in the mountains, then create an outdoor space that is rugged and embraces natural beauty. Nature-inspired textures, simple and earthy colors and ultimately an unpretentious, organic warmth are the design schemes to implement if you prefer to celebrate rustic luxuriousness.

Island-Infused

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Island-infused living means a style that matches the islands: laid-back, easy-going and happy. That, however, doesn't mean ordinary. Grandiose, glorious and gorgeous are island motifs as well. Especially when your outdoor space has a movie screen fit for island royalty.

Country Chic

www.stevensondesignworks.com

Country chic outdoor space refers to an aesthetic that represents upscale farmhouse-like design. The color palette of a country style kitchen will incorporate pastels and bright colors with the addition of splashes of modernity, particularly expressed via the high-end appliances, throughout the outdoor space.

Sophisticated Cool

www.housetrends.com

Sleek sophistication involves a palatial outdoor space that accommodates all your relatives and friends. With elbow room to spare.

Easy Breezy

Christie's International Real Estate

How about a private compound that offers exceptional oceanfront living? Yes, if it also has a lanai that features a summer kitchen complete with a wood-fired pizza oven, which opens to a wraparound lounge terrace with an 80-foot-long infinity pool and wading pool with in-water seating. This outdoor space turns a typical day into a holiday.

Ranch-Style

Christie's International Real Estate

Ranch-style living has become resort-at-home living. A climate controlled outdoor space for entertaining large groups creates a resort feeling that makes for the ultra sophisticated holiday get together.

It's time to turn your entertainment gatherings inside out. Make your parties memorable under the most spacious skies. Whether it's amongst the redwood forests or by the gulf stream waters, across some amber waves of grain or along purple mountain majesties, create an outdoor space at home that magnifies the beauty of the surrounding landscape, a luxury unto itself.

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Suzanne Dooley

Suzanne Dooley is a freelance writer and essayist who specializes in lifestyle & wellness, real estate, arts & culture, food and travel topics for a variety of digital and printed publications. She is a former attorney who practiced law in Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Connecticut and New York. Suzanne is also an avid traveler and a gourmet food aficionado who currently resides in Manhattan.

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