holly jolly

Last night I threw a gift exchange party for all the girls in my family who live nearby. Parties are so much fun and I just love to host! We all gathered for fun, food and lots of laughter. We are a laughing family. I'm not talking little snickers and courteous giggles. I'm talking full fledged doubled-over belly laughter. We all have very distinct laughs but we all end the same way, with a polite sigh. no joke. One of the best memories I have as a kid making Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Kath's was when there was about 15 of us girls in the kitchen and we all laughed about something and when we were finished 90% of us let out a sigh at the same time and we started back up with the laughter and then another sigh and laughter again. I love my family.

So back to the creative reason for you reading this-ness. I don't have much in the way of holiday platters and serve ware so I decided to stick with the theme for the season and wrap my dishes! They turned out pretty cute and the clean up was SO easy!

I started first with an adorable cupcake stand that my sister made for me. I took the whole thing apart and wrapped each layer. When I was putting the whole thing together, I was careful not to rip anything. In order for me to find where the screw was to go, I stuck a toothpick through the other end to make a small hole as my marker.
This way I didn't tear the paper and have to re-wrap.

After I finished, I needed to balance out the table. I wanted a platter for the veggies, but wet veggies on wrapping paper is not a great idea so I wrapped the bottom of a clear platter so that the paper didn't get wet but you could still admire its festiveness!

With all the craziness that the holidays bring, I decided to buy mostly pre-made food. These little lemon bites are from Costco and absolutely scrumptious! Yellow didn't quite stick with the theme so I just grabbed some frosting pens and added what was supposed to look like mistletoe to the tops. As you can tell I started moving away from the mistletoe idea and ended up somehow making strawberries? I dunno, but they were green and red and that's all that matters!

 All together I think it was a pretty fun night, and I'm excited to make this a Christmas tradition!