Christmas Party Preparations

After sleeping in this morning, we finally managed to get ourselves together and out the door to actually get something accomplished.

We started at Target, where we bought a few things for our upcoming Christmas party, including some stocking stuffers for the kiddos who'll be coming, and some candy and cookie cutters for the cookies that I'll be baking.

We also returned a Polly Pockets toy that we'd bought for our niece, and then bought another just like it, this time using the $5 coupon that we'd recieved via email the day after we'd bought the first one.

Is that wrong?

From there, we stopped for some lunch, then hit the grocery store to buy the rest of the Christmas party and cookie supplies.

In addition to the ones we'll be serving at the party, we're planning to give away some cookies as gifts - I'm taking a tray to my work party on Friday (at the monthly business meeting for all the directors), and we're also planning to take some to Dr T and our RE's office.

We bought several tubes of "slice-and-burn" sugar cookie dough, and ingredients for World's Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies.

I got some cookie cutters and colored sugar and we already have some sprinkles and "confetti" to decorate them. I also got as chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, a variety of Hershey Kisses (milk chocolate, dark chocolate, candy cane - chocolate with peppermint bits), Hershey Hugs, and M&Ms, so I'll probably "doctor them up" with that stuff, too.

I'm also making some pretzel treats that I found online. You use the "waffle" shaped pretzels, laying them out on a tray with a Kiss or Hug on each one. Heat them in the oven to soften the chocolate, then top with a red or green M&M, squishing the Hug/Kiss. They are really cute in the photo, especially the ones with the stripey Hugs.

I had to rein myself in from also making brownies and chocolate/white candy covered pretzels.

In addition to the cookies, we got the ingredients for the rest of the party fare: Cheesey Pigs-in-Blankets (because they were such a hit at Halloween), Anonymama's Cheese Ball (that's a given; I serve it at every party), 7-Layer Mexican Dip, Cheese, Crackers, Eggnog, Cider, Sodas. We'll pick up some beer and wine later in the week. We also have to pick up some festive disposable plates, because I forgot to check our stash before we left, and didn't know that we didn't have enough Christmasy ones left.

At the moment, we're expecting about 17 adults and 5 kids (4 of whom eat solid food) so I am, as usual, worried about whether we'll have enough food, but I think we'll be fine.

Of course, I still reserve the right to send Shrike out for something else at the last minute.