Q: Placemats protect the surface of your table from food and brighten up your dining experience. Make sure the edge of the placemat is about an inch away from the edge of the table. Choose a placemat that matches your plates and looks nice on your tabletop as well. When in doubt, choose a simple white placemat. A casual dining experience can include a soup or salad as an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert. First, place the large main entrée plate on the bottom center of the placemat. Next, place your salad plate or soup bowl on top of the main entrée plate. The napkin can be placed between the entrée plate and the appetizer plate or rolled up on top of the appetizer plate.  If you’re serving dinner rolls, place a small appetizer plate to the left of the placemat. The dessert plates should be brought in with the dessert for casual dining experiences. The forks will be placed on the left side of the plate and the knife and spoon on the right. Place the salad fork (if needed) to the left of the dinner fork and place the spoon to the right of the knife. If you want to set out dessert utensils, place them above the plate.  The sharp side of the knife should be turned towards the plate. Only set the table with silverware that you will use during the meal. Place the water glass above the knife on the placemat. If you’re planning on serving wine, place the wine glass to the left of the water glass and off the placemat. If you’d like to offer more than one wine, add other wine glasses behind the first in a triangle formation. Most casual dining experiences only offer one kind of wine. If you have more than one kind of wine to serve, consider hosting a formal dinner instead. Set aside your dessert plates in advance. Once you’re ready to serve dessert, clear the dirty plates and distribute the dessert plates. If you’re serving coffee, you can either bring out the coffee cups and saucers with the dessert or place them to the right of the water glass at the beginning of the meal. The dessert silverware can be brought in with the dessert plates or placed above the table setting at the beginning of the meal.
A: Set a placemat on the table. Arrange your plate and napkin. Place your silverware on the placemat. Arrange your drinkware. Plan for your desserts and coffee.

Q: The only real way to successfully perform is practice. In the weeks leading up to your performance, make sure you make time each day to practice. If you've rehearsed well, you'll do a better job the day of your performance.  Incorporate practice time into your daily routine. Take an hour or so to practice each day. Challenge yourself a little more with each practice session. At first, you may sing while reading the lyrics on the page. As you continue to practice, try to rely more and more on memorization alone. To study your stage presence, try singing in front of a mirror and studying your facial expressions. You can also record yourself singing and play it back to yourself. You can identify any weak spots and focus on those in another practice session. Performing a song is more than just hitting the right notes. You want to know what a song means so you can deliver the lyrics with the right resonance. As you prepare for your performance, strive to learn about the song.  Think about the speaker behind the song. How does the speaker feel and why? With a song from, say, a musical this can be easy. You can look into the character's history. With a song with a more abstract narrator, however, the information you have about the singer is limited to the song. Read through the lyrics and try to analyze what's happening emotionally. How does the narrator feel? Why? Try to learn a bit about the writer of the song. This can help you better understand what the song may be about. If a writer has a sad romantic history, for example, knowing this brings a lot of added context to a love song. If you're nervous about singing on stage, try attending a few karaoke nights with friends or family members. Karaoke can present you with a low stakes chance to test out your skills to a small audience. This can be especially helpful if you're singing a popular song that's likely to be an option for karaoke selection. One of the most important aspects to a live performance is making sure you remember your lyrics. If you're nervous, it's easy to slip up and forget a line or two. There are a lot of tricks you can use to memorize lyrics quickly.  Focus on one verse at a time. Trying to memorize the entire song in one sitting will be too stressful. It can help to walk fast as you recite the lyrics. Reciting the lyrics quickly, with quick body motion, forces you to say them without thinking. This can help the lyrics become an automatic response. Focus in on the lyrics you typically forget. There may be a certain pattern, and being aware of this pattern can help you remember when to focus more during a performance. For example, you may have pronoun issues. You may have a tendency to say "I" and "me" instead of "you." Try to be conscious of this as you proceed to sing for an audience. Feedback can be a great way to prep yourself for a performance. A listening audience can provide you with tips and advice on where to improve.  It can help to choose people who are not afraid to be constructively critical. You want to sing to someone who's willing to give fair feedback. Do not select someone who's overly positive or overly negative. You should also pick someone who knows something about singing. If you have a friend or family member who sings as well, this could be a great person to listen to you perform.
A:
Practice. Study the song. Go to a few karaoke nights. Make sure you memorize the lyrics. Rehearse in front of an audience.