The weekend before Christmas we had all our NoCo BFFs over for a Christmas dinner and ornament exchange. We started this tradition last year, and it turned out great, so we were very excited to host this year's! We've decided it's going to be a traveling tradition between each other's homes, which is so fun. We seriously are blessed to have such a great group of friends to connect with here - we love them all and always have the best time laughing and catching up!!
So Kate and I made peppermint bark for our guests to take home after the party - white and dark chocolate. Read up on white chocolate before you attempt this though - we had to make a second run to the grocery store after quickly ruining the first batch :) It was really fun though, and we got great reviews!
And here are the assembled favors pre-party, with the cute (and cheap!) sparkly Target ornaments.
Mike wowed us all with the Mistletoe Margaritas he made!! They're actually pomegranate margs, and they were TASTY.
Lindsay with Jenn & Chuck Carpenter. They got the award for laughing the loudest during the ornament exchange - I think they really enjoyed it :) It was so fun for our house to be so full that we had to use both tables for dinner - I love to have tons of people over! And oh my goodness, the food was delicious. We had the best appetizers and foods for dinner and desserts imaginable. I think we're still working on the ham and turkey in our fridge a week later :)
Clay, Mike and Mike.
Me and the Hubs in our green (festive!) sweaters.
Brandi, me and Shellie. Love these girls!! They are so much fun to hang with.
The cute new Huntington family. Eliot had a good time at the party too! He came dressed as Santa :)
Kateums and me. Hello! Does she look great or what??
So originally we thought about doing an Ugly-Christmas-Sweater party but it didn't pan out.....some, however, didn't get the memo and came dressed to the nines. We laughed so hard at their Goodwill finds. Especially Chuck, manning the shiny poinsetta sweatshirt!! And there's Santa with them, too, enjoying his binky for dinner.
Everyone piled around the tree for the ornament exchange. Which was one of those "steal each others ornaments" kind of game. We had a blast! Everyone came with their ornament wrapped up, and we drew numbers, the whole bit. We were seriously laughing til we had tears coming out of our eyes at everyone stealing the high-value ornaments. It was awesome, and is already highly anticipated for Christmas 2009.
And here everyone displays their final ornament. There were some awesome choices - including the giant acorn Mike Huntington ended up with!
So that was our Friend Christmas, which started the holiday week off right. It's so rare for us all to be free to get together on the same night, with everyone's schedule - so it was even more of a blessing for it to work out. We so enjoyed our evening and were reminded how lucky we are to have this community of friends to celebrate the holidays with, since we're all so far away from our families.
What a merry Christmas!
6 comments:
What a great time! Those exchanges are the best...especially when people are racing around like animals trying to get the one that everyone wants :)
So glad you had a good Christmas with your friends! You and Mike are so lucky to have such a great group of people in CO! Love you!! And love your green sweater by the way....so cute! :)
And P.S....Kate DOES look so great! Tell her I said so please :)
I want to be a FoCoCO friend. Maybe we can be at the 2009 gathering :) Glad you had such a fun party. Merry Christmas!
That's a great idea for holiday parties- the exchange and the favors. I may have to steal that for next year :) Happy Holidays!
I love the shiny poinsetta sweatshirt. That is classic! Looks like you all had a blast!
Looks like fun! That's so nice that you had so many people...it is rare to get together with everyone. Loved baby Santa Huntington...so cute! Happy New Year!
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