Cookie Exchange Party

I know it's been awhile since my last post but with a very busy Thanksgiving weekend and the holidays quickly approaching, time is going by way too fast! One of the activities that I have been working on for the holidays is a Christmas Cookie Exchange party! The last two weeks I have spent quite a few late lights, along with my best friend who co-hosted the party with me, making prizes, establishing a set of "rules", creating decorations, baking and everything else that a successful party requires! The "rules" was my favorite part of the party, this was needed to ensure that all cookies were "baked", everyone came with a minimum number of cookies, everyone had an ugly Christmas sweater and most importantly, no kids or husbands came to the party! This was a Cooke Exchange Party, but it also was a fun night for just the ladies!

This was our first attempt at such a party and is now going to be an annual tradition. Including us (the two hostesses), we had a dozen people at the party with nearly 40 dozen cookies plus plenty of appetizers and drinks. The picture isn't the greatest but here is the table with all of the cookies the ladies brought to the party!

We also had prizes for 3 categories which was the Best Looking Cookie, Most Creative Recipe and the Ugliest Christmas Sweater. We obtained a copy of each recipe ahead of time, made copies and handed them out at the party so everyone went home with a recipe of all of the cookies at the party. And this allowed everyone to vote for the "Most Creative Recipe". I should have taken pictures of the winners of each category, especially the "ugliest sweater". It may be too late for that, but I do have pictures of the prizes that I made for the party. Each prize was made out of vinyl and I think turned out great! The Red Vinyl sign is made out of tile, the Subway Art Sign was a Goodwill frame that I re-painted, both of which I will post a separate blog on how I made them in more detail!

I wrapped up all of the "prizes", we placed them under the Christmas tree and the winners unwrapped their presents to reveal their prize! I hope everyone had a lot of fun and I think, come next year, there will be very little things I would want to change when it comes time to prepare for our "2nd Annual Cookie Exchange Party"!