We host an ornament potluck party come winter time. It's good motivation to get the tree up asap and keep our house wonderful and Christmasfied for as long as possible! Our wide and wonderful group of loved ones come together to mingle, eat, sing, play, visit, chat and ultimately take home a new and potentially unfabulous ornament for their tree. It all depends on the players. It's all in good fun and this year we tweaked things just a bit. We themed the food, had a hot chocolate bar with different flavors of chocolate, flavored syrups, whipped cream, cinnamon sticks and the hot water dispenser. We had coffee from It's a Grind available to help keep us warm in this chilly southern California winter cold. (argh 45 degrees!!) Note to self as a non coffee drinker... coffee drinkers prefer house blends and not vanilla nut or hazlenut or whatever other flavor sounds yummy to my not coffee drinking self. Sorry guys!
Instead of our usual 3 steals rule, we took it down to 2 since we knew we'd be expecting a lot of people! So here's the game... You bring a gift wrapped ornament. Awesome, funny, beautiful, whatever, as long as it's under $10. You place it on the table. When playing time comes... We draw/assign numbers. Chronologically, players choose to open an ornament or steal one that they like from someone who has already opened something. Each ornament can be opened then stolen 2 times at which point it's frozen. Our game is generally pretty intense and ruthless but this year, while still fun, we were all a little distracted by the cold. At least I was!
Lots of kids jumped in the trampoline and chased each other down the slide. Last year, the lovely Cakestina made cookies to decorate. This year we popped out the spray can of frosting and graham crackers to make "gingerbread houses". We got quite the wonderful array of candy/cookie/cracker/frosting sculptures. Love their craziness and creativity!
Lucky us, we had old friends, new friends, kids from 1 to 92! In total there were upwards of 60 faces warming our chilly backyard! I remember when we first started hosting this party, we'd have 20 ornaments playing. We had 52 on the table this year. Needless to say, I should've allotted more than an hour when I was planning!
There goes my faux-c-d again. ;)
We definitely missed a few faces but we will be doing it again next year! Filling the house with yummy Christmas scents (put a cut up apple and or pear in a pot of water with some cinnamon sticks and a few shakes of nutmeg. stick it on the stove and let it boil. your house will smell DEE licious!)
It's nice to own a production company to light up your backyard for a night time party!
It got PRETTY chilly, we tried staying warm by the fire!
An AMAZING shout out to my friend and neighbor Mia Reed (of Mia Marisa Photography). I was fretting because I hadn't taken out my camera at all during the evening and was worried I wouldn't get any photos that night. She took herself oldskool on my little Canon Rebel XS and snapped a few for me! You are wonderful and I'm so grateful for you!!
The Kamaes and The Thompsons.
Peas in Pods
1 comment:
Kryssie, you are so sweet. I was happy to do it. I wish I could have stayed longer to participate in all the fun. I'm glad I was able to capture a few fun moments for you.
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