Friday, December 19, 2008

Joyful Joyful #10: A simple holiday party

Last night, we had a small group of friends from our church home group over for a Christmas party. It was simple and laid back, but I thought I would show a few photos of the set up. I did not take many and my camera flash stinks, so there will only be a few for now. I will be posting more photos of my general home decor in the next couple of days.

Since it was more laid back, we used paper & plastic. I love these square paper plates from Target - they definitely take it up a notch. The cute napkins are from Crate & Barrel . Sweet little tins from the Target $1 section!

The drink station (minus sangria, cider & eggnog):

I could not resist these gorgeous Evian bottles, designed by Christian Lacroix (you can find them at Target or, I believe, at most grocery stores).

As always, I utilized my mason jars as glasses. The christmas ribbon ties (mix of vintage and new ribbon) have been reused for the past 3 years! When they are done, I slip them off and bag them away in the Christmas boxes.

The cider spices I ordered from Chewing the Cud :

The cider was delicious!

As you can see in the above pictures, I used pieces of fun, scalloped scrapbook paper under many of the elements of the set up: the glasses, drinks, centerpiece and platters. Cheap and super cute! I had to punch the wholes out of the scallops, so I used those little circles as confetti around my ornament tree on the buffet (you'll see it in just a bit).


My carnations from the Christmas Tea had died, so I replaced them with whatever white flowers my husband could find at the grocery story.  Daisies and mums, works for me!


We had a good ol' potluck, but decided to have a theme this year: All of the food was supposed to be white. Here is what we ended up with:
*Caprese salad
*Clam Chowder
*Quesedillas
*White mac and cheese
*Chicken Fettucini Alfredo with brocoli 
*Patato salad
*White sangria
*Egg nog
*White wine
*Sugar cookies, cream puffs, & meringues for dessert. (& of course I had to ruin the theme by throwing in some peppermint ice cream & dark chocolate covered joe-joes)


We decided to get all dressed up, which was fun. Here I am with my little man and his 3 piece suit:

Nevermind that I look about 12. Isn't he so cute?

It was a wonderful party! We had a white elephant gift exchange (We are now proud owners of a wind-up toy man that does push-ups and a mini golf bag that holds BBQ tools!), ate, ate, and ate and then had our annual "sing Christmas songs as loud as you can while shaking all sorts of percussion instruments" caroling time. *Sorry neighbors!*

Stay tuned, because I have a lot of great things to share:
*Gift wrap ideas
*Christmas cards
*Some fun new Christmas music
*Favorite family traditions


For now, I am off to my husband's work Christmas party. Happy friday!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love this!!! Wish I was there! :)