We were in charge of Dallin's family party this last Christmas at his parents house. It was a little tricky because I'm use to either ginormous parties or smaller parties with fewer guests. And having a party at a different location then your home always brings some challenges. I hoped what I planned would still be fun and flow nicely and I hope everyone had a good time! I learned a lot from this party-like usual, I learn something from each party I plan! One thing I learned was making sure to check for apostrophes like in it's on chalkboards! haha
I love behind the scenes pictures and tips so I thought I'd include a few before I get to the party. I love to set up what I can the night before the event. This can be hard sometimes, but there is always something you can do ahead of time to make it easier the day of the actual event. For this party I decided to decorate trees, decorate 1 table and set up the hot chocolate bar.
Since I didn't want the marshmallows or food to go stale in the hot chocolate bar I kept everything in its package until right before we were ready to have hot chocolate. It also kept the kids from snacking on it all night long at the party!
We went to Zurchers to find some table cloths last minute and found all of their Holiday things 50% off. We had our Christmas party after Christmas so this was a total treat! We were able to get the cups, napkins and plates for a great deal! Planning ahead is such a great thing to do with parties! We've been on the look out for over a year planning and prepping this party so we knew exactly what would work when we saw it.
To welcome the family in to the party guests were able to guess how many candies were in each jar. Mixing up candy sizes definitely makes it trickier for older guests! How perfect are these galvanized containers to catch the guesses!? And this cute toboggan from my mom to hold the jars!
When in doubt always add ribbon! haha Funny story I bought WAY too much ribbon for my wedding because I seriously wanted it everywhere. Turns out its the ribbon that never ends and keeps on giving because it is always there for me when I need pink, white or gray ribbon! haha
We had a traditional Christmas dinner with turkey/ham and all the great sides. Dallin and I provided the turkey and ham and his siblings brought 1 (or 2) side and an extra item if needed. His parents were so sweet to cook the turkey and ham there so we didn't have to transport and worry about them.
Our first activity after dinner was Grandma's Christmas cookies! The Strongs have a tradition to make these cookies on Christmas eve for Santa every year. All of the Strong kids are married and moved out with kids of their own now so I thought it would be fun to revisit this family tradition. My mother in law did everything but it seemed pretty easy if you plan ahead! She made two different doughs, a regular chocolate chip cookie dough with out the chocolate chips and a chocolate dough, then bought a few different kinds of M&M's. She got regular, mint, and hazelnut, but you could even get more or just stick with regular M&M's.
She rolled out the dough balls while the kids placed the M&M's on. Livy loved this! We had one tray per family, we wrote the names on the parchment paper to remember then each family got a plate of cookies to take home and enjoy! My favorite was the mint M&M's with the chocolate dough! So good!
Trays and trays of cookies it was a wonderful sight!
While the cookies were baking the family could choose to do crafts or play minute to win it games.
I think we were all surprised how many kids chose the craft table instead of minute to win it games. My sweet sister made extra of a few crafts from a different family party so I didn't need to worry about this at all! Just had to collect crayons, glue (this is my all time favorite craft glue and check out those reviews!) and a hole punch!
My favorite was the snowman bunting my sister made. But she also had a coloring book, a little snowman they could color, and a snow man ornament. My mother in law had some nativity ornament/crafts that people experimented with too!
Meanwhile Dallin was playing the Minute to Win It games. I loved how little kids liked the games and even adults. Grandpa Strong even got in on them! I seriously loved it! I linked the list of games that I planned on for the night. It just took minimal preparation and everything can be found at the dollar store or Amazon!
This was by far the favorite game of few we did. They had a minute to bounce the ping pong ball on the table and try to get it in a different cup each time. If they got 2 in 1 cup it didn't count.
After that the kids opened presents from Grandma and Grandpa Strong and we opened up the Hot Chocolate Bar! I love to create "snow" with batting and twinkling lights.
I used pinecones and small trees for fillers. I loved the idea of having a variety of marshmallows on one tray and the guests could choose which ones they wanted. The new Frozen marshmallows went perfectly for our Winter Wonderland theme.
Hot chocolate bars can be as simple or as elaborate as you'd like them. We opted to have milk hot chocolate already prepared in a drink warmer, and have only a few options because there were so many kids. I also had my sweet sister in law take the kids orders and supervise this while we were getting hot chocolate so it didn't become a total disaster.
The kids loved having hot chocolate and cookies for dessert and to end the party.
Pretty sure Livy had the best night of her young life because she was mostly running wild and doing and eating whatever she wanted. One time I found her on top of the coffee table and the next I saw her eating starburst by the handful. Oh well! haha
The after party was of course a dance party! Livy absolutely loved it!
We gave each sibling and Dallin's parents a bag of my favorite white chocolate popcorn. I tied a cute glittery snowflake ornament and a sweet little tag (I'll link below) to finish off the little favor/christmas gift.
I used some extra snowflakes to decorate the trees my mother in law already had up in her home.
Here's some helps I mentioned in this post:
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