My friend Lisa has held this party at her home for... oh maybe 4 or 5 yrs? She invites every lady at church plus some of her other relatives and friends. The first year, we all got really into the "Most Festively Dressed" contest. That elf is me in 2005. The lady dressed as a present is my husband's aunt, who also had two huge Christmas stockings on her legs, and battery operated lights wrapped around herself. This photo is cracking me up because those two young girls are so grown up now! One in college and one a strikingly beautiful 15 yr. old.
This year I just wore my Christmas socks.
Okay, that's not ALL I wore; I mean I had regular clothes on and funky Christmas socks to add the festive touch. You knew what I meant, right!
The way Lisa set the exchange up is that everyone brings 6 dozen homemade cookies. All the cookies are set on her big dinning room table and we, with a platter in hand, walk around the table a few times, each time taking 3 cookies (as they dwindle down we lower the amount) of each kind. With the invitation, she attaches some guidelines, such as no breakable delicate cookies and she asks as many of us as possible to let her know in advance what cookie we are bringing to reduce duplicates. We take the same amount of every cookie- no pickin'' favorites! The result is a platter overflowing with 6 dozen variety of delicious cookies! Some take them home and freeze until Christmas day, others start munching before they are out the door. I try to give away as many as possible to neighbors and acquaintances.
Another idea for a simpler exchange is found at Mrs. Julie Fink's site, which has lots of great ideas pertaining to ladies' ministries.
Along with the cookie exchange, Lisa serves a scrumptious ham dinner and we play a game. This year, she had a fun simple game, which was terrific since there were LOTS of woman and we can be hard to quiet down and organize into a game!
She had bought 7 adorable gifts such as cute Christmas pillows or beautiful nativity wall hangings and wrapped them up. We divided into 7 groups and each group had a pair of over sized fuzzy dice. She set the timer for I think 4 minutes, and during that time we went around and around taking turns rolling the dice. Whenever you roll a 7 or 11, you get the gift... until someone else rolls a 7 or 11, then they snag it! Whoever has the gift in hand when the timer goes off, keeps it! It was fun and easy and a great game for a huge crowd. Sadly, I did not win. It was a really lovely gift, too. Good thing I have 6 dozen cookies to console myself! Just kidding... I limited myself to one cookie only... and it was broken anyway. Can't give a broken cookie away! ;)
Tomorrow is our youth group Christmas party, which I will no doubt share with you. I hope I'm not boring you, but I love to get ideas from other people because frankly, sometimes I just can not think of creative activities on my own! I love to copy other's games so I am trying to be fair and share the ones I know!
Can you beleive Christmas is only a week away!?!! YEAH!
3 comments:
Oh my!That's so old!I look so young!
How fun!
I love the fuzzy dice game idea, how fun.
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