A: How was your weekend?

B: It was fun but exhausting.

A: What’s up?

B: I had some old friends round for dinner at my house. Because it was an important occasion, I pulled out all the stops and prepared a three- course meal with a bottle of expensive, imported wine.

Note: This is an idiom we get from music. Pipe organs are the huge organs we find in churches and cathedrals. They have stops that control the air flow to the various pipes. If we pull out all the stops, we allow air into all the pipes and therefore make a very loud and powerful sound. The idiom means to “do everything you can to make something successful,” similar to “going all out” or “going all the way” to do something.