In this excerpt from “Hand It To Your Host,” which appeared in the Your Life section of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Susan discusses the importance of hostess gifts:

If you’re lucky enough to have friends or family who spread freshly laundered linens across the guest room bed and set out a special bar of soap in anticipation of your summer visit, return the favor with a gift that gives back to the house. Consider something that will look lovely and help your host entertain future guests.

“They’ve just saved you a lot of money,”Huston says. “They’ve gone to extra trouble.” Not acknowledging that with a small token is bad manners. Huston also suggests taking a present even if you won’t see the owners of the vacation home being entrusted to you.

Susan is featured in the Ask the Expert column in the Your Style section of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. The reader asks what constitutes appropriate attire for an outdoor wedding in March. The wedding begins at 7 p.m. and is to be held at the Dallas Arboretum. The reader wonders if, because it’s before Easter, a spring look would be inappropriate. Susan replies:

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Nothing makes co-workers lose their cool faster than a biohazard in the icebox.

Move over, road rage. Take a flying leap, air rage. Refrigerator rage is all the rage. Who hasn’t wanted to mow down their coworkers for leaving their moldy meals in the office fridge or, worse — stealing your strudel?

The fridge, then, can be a barometer for what’s going on in an office.

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Susan Huston, who teaches etiquette to everyone from the Texas Rangers rookies to young corporate types, says parents have long accepted manners education as being ‘important for girls.’ The prevailing attitude for boys is: ‘”He’s too young; when he’s older, I’ll teach him.”

“But,” warns Huston, “if you wait, it may be too late.”

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Spring fashion is always about color, but this year women have some alternatives to the traditional florals. Prints are bold and bright and most often strong graphics (remember Pucci?), or take their cue from African, Indian, Greek or Navajo motifs.

“The great thing about the spring fashion trends is that you can adapt them to what looks best on you and fits your lifestyle,” said Susan Huston, fashion coordinator for the 20th annual Colleyville Women’s Club fashion show. Her special “wardrobe magic” section during the fashion show on March 11 is a how-to on adapting the runway fashions to your figure type.

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You don’t think in college that you are going to have to sit down at a six-course meal, but you never know when it’s going to happen.

Dining In Style doesn’t mean you won’t run into a piece of gristle now and then. What’s a girl to do? Do you discreetly spit it into your napkin? “No,” says Susan Huston , “you take it out just like you put it in.”

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Rangers rookie Scott Heard knew exactly what to do with his linen napkin, but the soup bowl and forks threw him completely off base.

“I wasn’t sure where you put them when you’re done,” said Heard, of San Diego.

But by the end of an etiquette workshop Monday at The Ballpark in Arlington, Heard and 19 other Ranger rookies could sit down to dinner with Miss Manners herself and never again have to worry about using the fish fork for dessert or mistaking the finger bowl for soup.

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Take it from the animated woman who teaches the Texas Rangers how to eat soup: social graces are important to business success.

“There’s a general lack of social skills in our society,” said Susan Huston, who operates an etiquette consulting business from her Arlington home. “The Number One etiquette mistake is the ‘wet noodle’ handshake.”

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When you think of a professional baseball player’s etiquette, images of tobacco chewing and sunflower seed spitting may come to mind. Etiquette consultant Susan Huston is trying to change that.

Huston spent six hours last month teaching Texas Rangers rookie prospects everything from how to tie a necktie to where to place empty sugar packets when drinking tea at a restaurant(underneath the saucer folded neatly).

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We’ve all seen the scenario. Someone – it could be anybody – is smart, aggressive, energetic and full of ideas about products and promotions. Maybe they’re also inherently entrepreneurial. They go to college, stick their head in the books and learn the basics.

Then they land a job, switch companies or two, three, or six times, steadily moving up the old career ladder, the fires of ambition burning white-hot.

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