Holiday Cookie Exchange Party

{Real Parties}

We like to host a holiday party every year.  Not a stuffy adult holiday party, but a fun get together for the littles.  With my busy schedule, I knew I didn't want to be the only one in charge of making goodies, so how about a cookie exchange?  I had each family bring 2 dozen cookies (homemade or store bought,) and we just planned to lay them all out on the table and guests could mix and match the 2 dozen to take home.

I got the idea for the color palette, turquoise, red, gree, pink and silver, from Elli. They printed this totally cute gingerbread man invite for me. They also had a free printable party kit on their blog to match full of place cards, recipe cards, stickers, a banner and more.  Thanks for making it so easy Ellinee!

My wonderful hubby made these scrumptious egg nog truffles and we shared the recipe with our friends.

We set up a coffee/cocoa/milk/egg nog bar.  I found the cute cups and signs in the dollar section at Target (yes, I have an addiction.)  Also, check out the adorable gingerbread man marshmellows!

I bought mini milk jugs from Shop Sweet Lulu.  Love them!

We had a lot of kiddos coming, of various ages, so I wanted to have a few activities for them.  We had foam gingerbread men for them to decorate with stickers and various holiday games as well as temporary mustache finger tattoos.  We also had one of my favorite Christmas movies playing in the background, Charlie Brown's Christmas.  Each child could look on the pink tree for their name to find their bell.

Here's a close up of the tissue tassel garland that I made, for above the table.  You can find instructions on how to make your own here.

In case our guests didn't want to take the whole 2 dozen cookies home to eat themselves, I thought it would be nice to provide packaging for them to make up little cookie gifts for neighbors, teachers, etc. So the room off the kitchen served as the gift wrap room with little boxes, bags, tissue paper, doilies, tags, ribbon and tape. 

Here are a few of the pretty packages that I ended up with.

We hope that our guests had as much fun as we did and I hope that you have fun hosting a cookie exchange of your own!