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Ugly Sweater Christmas Party
We're throwing an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party next weekend, with a mix of adults and kids. We're starting at 5 p.m.
My menu plan right now: order a tray of small sandwiches from a local deli, maybe make a big pan of mac and cheese, and appetizers like pigs in a blanket, veggie tray, chips/pretzels and dips, and possibly stuffed mushrooms. Drinks: beer and wine, soda, hot chocolate and maybe hot cider (plus maybe some liquor for the adults to add to their drinks). Should I buy a quart of eggnog, too?
Dessert ideas: cookies, brownies, candy dishes, stuffed strawberries, Oreo truffles. I don't want to go overboard here because at our last house party a ton of people brought desserts.
I thought maybe I'd put Hershey Kisses or M&Ms in a holiday jar and let people guess how many are inside, and the winner gets the candy. And everyone can vote on the ugliest outfits ... one adult winner and one kid winner, and they each get a small gift card.
Any suggestions or feedback?
Re: Ugly Sweater Christmas Party
Sounds like fun! But I don't think you really need the Oreo Truffles, so you can just send those up to Boston so I can take them to the dinner party I'm going to tonight.
Have a great time!
Everything sound great and it sounds like a fun party. If you are pretty confident others will bring desserts, I'd just do the strawberries, candy dishes and 1 more item.
The holiday jar is a great idea, I always love doing those at parties. Mostly because I usually win
Please take a cheesy group picture:
You could have a picture station with props; garland, a string of lights that are plugged in, reindeer antlers, santa and elf hats....Target and the Dollar Tree have stuff.
Here is a link to some free ugly sweater printables.
For another game...Pin the Ugliness on the Sweater.
Make a large outline of a sweater on a piece of poster board. Put a star some where on the sweater and that will be the winning pin location.
Put the poster board on a wall.
Make cut outs of trees, ornaments, reindeer, Santa, Elves, candy canes. You could also just cut stuff out of a magazine...celebrity faces, cars, toys.
Your guests pick a cutout...put some double sided tape on the back, blindfold, spin and let 'em go ;-)
Winner that pins the cutout closest to the star wins a Snuggie!!
Definitely make the mac and cheese and you should be fine in that dept. For desserts I'd skip a couple of them. Even if nobody brings anything the strawberries, candy, and cookies OR brownies OR truffles should be enough.
I like the games ideas.
Bio
Thanks for your help, everyone! We had the party last night and it was a lot of fun. We had 4 kids and about 20 adults throughout the course of the night. Here's what we did:
Menu:
main dishes: pan of homemade macaroni and cheese, and two three-foot sandwiches from a local pizzeria (ham and provolone, and eggplant with roasted red peppers and fresh mozzarella). We have few leftovers from each. I tried to send people home with leftovers but only one person wanted to take anything.
small bites: shrimp ring from the supermarket, chicken wings (one plate of Buffalo-style, one plate of Dijon mustard/garlic), chips/pretzels/cheese doodles, Tostitos (these were eaten quickly and I kept refilling them), Ranch dip, celery/carrot sticks/cucumber slices, cocktail franks in puff pastry (they went FAST, even though I'd bought two packages of franks). Two different people brought cheese and cracker platters.
desserts: homemade chocolate chip cookies, Hershey's Kisses and M&Ms, cream cheese-stuffed strawberries (went FAST - plus they look fancy and aren't hard to make) and plain strawberries. A few people brought cookies and chocolates.
drinks: the kids drank Sprite, a few adults drank Pepsi and bottled water. Popular beers were Yuengling, Coors Lite and Miller Lite. One person drank red wine. MH and his friends had different types of craft beers. We made hot chocolate at the end of the night (some spiked with liquors) with our closest friends.
games: I bought a Christmas jar at Dollar Tree and filled it with Hershey's Kisses, and set out a pad and pen for everyone to guess how many were in the jar (closest number without going over). My mom won and I gave her the jar/candy to keep. We also voted on the ugliest sweater and we gave the winner a Snuggie.
Other tips:
When we went to the Salvation Army to find our own outfits, we bought a couple extra ugly sweaters and washed them. A few of our friends came with no ugly outfits saying they couldn't find anything, so we loaned them the extra sweaters.
We have a cat who doesn't like being around crowds (and we had a guest who is very afraid of cats), so we put him in our bedroom upstairs with his food and litter box and toys and shut the door. He hid upstairs during our October housewarming party but his food/litter box was downstairs, which we didn't think of at the time, so this time we took better care of him. Keep your pets comfortable, and if there are kids around it's probably wise to keep the pets in a separate area so there are no problems.
A few of the kids who came liked to touch our stuff, so there were a few things that I would've put out of reach in hindsight (nothing was harmed, but still). I knew one particular kid likes to nibble on snacks and then put them back on the platters, so I gave the kid their own small bowl of snacks. If we do it again next year I think we'll make it adults-only.
We had a playlist of Christmas music ready to go, but we never played it because a few guests wanted to watch TV instead.
We took some silly photos with friends in our sweaters ... nearly everyone had an iPhone to take photos, but I wish I'd asked my one friend to bring her nice camera.
Just thought I'd share!