2nd Annual Cocoa & Crafts Party

My favorite party of the year.  This is my 3rd year hosting a girl's night holiday party.  The first was a cookie exchange.  It's now morphed into just a food and crafts deal.  Kids are a little jealous they aren't invited.  For them it's a McD's picnic with dad in my bedroom and a holiday special on tv.  ;)

This year I was either not as organized or a litte too ambitious or some of both.  I was not ready at party time, didn't have stuff done that I wanted and didn't get many pictures.  But that's ok.  I have great friends and the first comers jumped right in to help chop veggies and whatnot.  Plus we are quite casual and everyone just goes with the flow.  Lots of chatter, laughter, eating and crafting.

On my menu this year I had:  cranberry meatballs, bacon wrapped apricots, bruschetta, manchego twists, pastry wrapped brie with apples, grapes and crackers and veggies and spinach dip...

and mini snowball cupcakes, mini vanilla rolled cookies, white choc dipped oreos with sprinkles, choc dipped strawberries, brownie bites with whipped cream and crushed peppermint candy and homemade marshmallows with choc and crushed peppermint (these were SO good!).

I really love serving bite sized desserts because if others are like me, you wanna try a little of everything!

Cokes in the bottle...the only way to go!

And a hot cocoa bar with peppermint sticks and mini homemade snowflake marshmallows.

Then there was crafting.  Supplies to make fun gift tags....stamps, embellishments, pretty papers and big paper punches.

Also, mini paper houses and paper tree ornaments.

We used the template in this post for the tiny houses.  We just used pretty cardstock papers to make them.

And we used Allsorts felt tree pattern to cut paper trees.  Then glued on pretties and ribbon to hang.

And lastly, the party favors.  I put a little snack mix in some small jars...more on this in a few days as I'm using this as a base for some teacher's gifts.   :)