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Our 2021 Christmas Party

By Kelsey

on Dec 07, 2021

We just had our annual (excluding last year) Christmas party and it was so much fun! I love having this party and giving all of my friends a reason to dress up and celebrate!  I got so many questions about all of the details on instagram so I figured I would put them all here.

Invites:

We send out our invites via Paperless Post about 2 months before the party (early October) because I know everyones calendars get very busy around the holidays!  I love giving people ample time to plan babysitters and such.  On the invite I just give the location, time, date and let everyone know that we will provide a large charcuterie, desserts and drinks!  The party starts at 7 so everyone knows to eat dinner beforehand. We invited about 75 people (knowing quite a few lived too far to make it) and about 25 ended up coming!  We also note that it is cocktail attire which can really go anyway you want. Girls always wear cute dresses – I wore this green dress (it’s short but I loved it!), and Matt wore dark jeans, a black t-shirt and this fun red blazer!

Budget:

Now we don’t really set a firm budget for this but we usually try to stay around $500.  Since it’s Christmas we already have all of that decor up but we spend money on the charcuterie board, desserts, drinks, cute napkins, fun plastic cups and this year, a balloon arch. This year out front living room was empty so I lined the walls with twinkle lights and I just loved the vibe of it!

Activities:

We love adding a few things to the night to keep everyone entertained and mingling.  The main event is Trivia!  I love trivia because a little competition gets everyone chatting, excited and it breaks up the night well.  This year we did Christmas Movie Trivia on a power point and used apple screen mirroring to put it on the TV.  We had people get in groups of 4 and gave each team little sheets of paper that said Team Name: and Answer: so they could fill one out after each question and had 2 minutes to turn them in.  Matt read the questions and kept score and I collected the answer cards!  We also get little fun prizes for the winners like this Foot Massager – something cool that isn’t too pricey, then a few dollar spot things at Target!

With any good party you need some sweet music to play in the background to make sure there is no quiet moments. We payed a perfect Mistletoe Mixer on Spotify, everyone loves good Christmas tunes and you don’t need a person making sure the music stays upbeat and the guests moving!

We also live in Southern California and because it doesn’t snow here, we have a snow machine!  It is so fun to turn on for a bit for some photos and fun and everyone always loves it.  All you need is the machine and some snow juice and it works with just the flip of a switch.

Food:

I love to do a charcuterie board on my giant 5 ft long board I made a few years ago.  I shared how I made it in this blog post if you’re interested. Here was the cheese line up this year:

Cranberry Pecan Baked Brie – this was the centerpiece of the board, it was amazing!

From Trader Joe’s: Unexpected Cheddar, Creamy Toscano Cheese Soaked in Syrah, Old Amsterdam Gouda, Goat Cheese, Le Delice De Bourgogne Triple Cream Soft Ripened Cheese.

For meats I stuck with salami and prosciutto and did the salami in a rose formation which I will show on instagram! For crackers I did Fig & Olive Crisps, Raisin Rosemary Crisps, Multigrain Crackers, Cheese Crisps and Pita Crackers. Then I also had some honey, fig jam and cherry preserved in bowls with these cute little gold spoons in them.

Then for the desserts I just got a ton of cookies and candies and put them all on 2 platters for dessert charcuterie!

Drinks:

This is going to be different for every group I am sure but we love to provide a little bit of everything when it comes to drinks.  This year we had 2 pre-made batch cocktails – Paper Plane & Pomegranate Margarita and they were both a hit! I got these plastic gold glitter martini glasses for the paper plane and regular gold glitter plastic cups for the margarita.  Then we also had a little wine tasting area which I thought would be fun but wasn’t a huge hit (i think because most people were into the cocktails!).  Then outside we had some coolers with beers, canned mixed drinks (like Cutwater) and seltzers.