A Christmas Cookie Swap Party and Holiday Home Tour Wrap up

I hosted a Cookie Swap Party at my house this past weekend. I've always wanted to host a Cookie Swap, so this year I finally pulled the trigger and made it happen. I am still coming down off that sugar high. Thanks to facebook I got to meet all sorts of brand new friends and see a few really old friends, too. I loved talking to everyone so much that I totally didn't get a single photo of the people or the cookies. I've decided that I truly miss hosting parties. We used to always be the party house, but once I got pregnant I stopped hosting because I was too tired to deal with the things partying involves. After this last party, though, I realized that I need that real life interaction with people. The extrovert in me craves it. So, I'm making myself a promise to have more parties and get togethers at home in 2012. Y'all are all invited over to sit around my house and hang out! Just be sure to let me know when you're coming so I can hide my unmentionables, mmkay?

Even though I didn't get a single photo during the party, I did manage to snap a few shots of the table setups so I wanted to share them here. I moved my blue desk in front of my mantel to serve a few non-cookie appetizers.



There was a lot of cheese. And grapes. And sausage balls. And a few veggies. I tried to find things that would be salty to cut all that sweetness.



Over on the coffee table I had some popcorn and other snacky stuff.



Drinks were on the butlers pantry- I made this recipe for Crockpot Hot Chocolate (yummmm) and bought some hot spiced apple cider for another crockpot. We also had coffee and water.



The dining room table was left open for everyone to put their cookie trays on when they arrived. To get more cookies on my smallish table I added this board on top of upside down flower pots.



The board is actually a big wooden sign I stole from Garrett's bedroom and turned upside down. I used placemats to cover up the metal hangers. Nobody was the wiser.



I had one more folding table set up in the living room for more trays of cookies when they arrived. I'm glad we added this extra one because we filled both tables up with trays of cookies during the party.



I kept the decorating easy with some candy canes and tealights hung on a little Christmas tree and some stockings hung from the staircase with care. That is the extent of my decorating for this party, though. Very simple and easy! That's the name of the game this year.



Now, in all the Christmas posts this season I can't believe I haven't shown y'all where I put the wooden Christmas plaques this year! Even after the big giveaway I still forgot! So, let me throw those pictures in here while I'm at it. The little wooden plaques are sitting on the blue dresser in my living room.



I put a bunch of ornaments inside the birch log planter that I found at the Country Living Fair in Atlanta in October. On top of that went a wooden log slice, then I put out the bobble head Christmas trees.



I hope that the winners of my wooden Christmas plaques are enjoying their signs this year as much as I'm loving mine!



They look happy with the shaved wooden wreath on my tin wall tile.



I'm trying to participate in all the holiday link parties out there in the blog world, so I'm going to make this a multi-purpose post by linking up all of my previous Christmas decor posts here in one spot. Hopefully it isn't too confusing.

To see my Classy & Trashy Christmas Trees, click here.





And here is my glowing tree post this year.



To check out my 2011 Christmas mantel, click on over here.




If you'd like to see my blue kitchen tablescape, follow this link.



Over in this post I showed off my front porch decor and how I tranformed old fake wreaths into new updated wreaths with a few evergreen sprigs.



And I got my craft on in this post by showing off my DIY Scrap Wood Christmas tree.



There you go. All my holiday posts right here under one roof.

We are an anti-elf family around these parts (Bah, humbug) (and by the way, this post about overachieving elf mommies is friggin HILARIOUS). So, instead of me making messes and moving the elf around in the middle of the night we just have the old Avon Advent Mouse that Garrett moves from one pouch to the next every day.



Besides, who needs a sneaky little Elf on a Shelf when we have our own life sized version right here?



Besides, ours is much much cuter.

Happy Holidays, everybody!

Sharing at Funky Junk Donna's Link Party