Our Annual Christmas Party

Christmas season feels like it kicks into gear when two things happen at our house:

1. We get out our custom Lennox Christmas mugs with our names on them, that our wonderful Mymama gave to us 
   
2. We host our annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

Saturday was our 5th annual party and it was a blast!

I have finally hosted enough parties where I can prepare enough in advance so that when guests arrive, I'm not running around like a Christmas chicken with my head cut off and can actually enjoy my guests! I also had a tremendous additional helper this year, my sweet sister Margaret. She came in town for the occasion and we would not have been able to pull everything off on Saturday without her. 

This year, our party food was themed to: Country Christmas, which means I had an excuse to make some of my most favorite foods. This is the stuff I call "real food" as opposed to desserts :) We noshed on biscuits (buttermilk & chive and cheese), country style slow cooked green beans, hash brown casserole and a delicious brown sugar glazed ham. 

Although the real food was mouthwatering, my favorite course was and always is DESSERT! This year I tried my hands at making mini hand pies. They were a little bit of work BUT they turned out so deliciously scrumptious, I would make them again. From the buzz I heard around the house, I believe they were one of the favorites of my guests as well. 

I also made: sugar cookies with an icing glaze and finished with the best buttercream icing on the planet (no lie!), gingerbread cupcakes with brown sugar cinnamon buttercream icing, white wedding cupcakes with the best buttercream icing ever, white wedding cupcakes with candy cane icing, chocolate chip pecan hand pies, salted caramel apple hand pies and brown butter chocolate chip cookies. Oh, I'm craving them again right now!

Close-Up of the sugar cookies.
I was quite pleased with how the
sugar white and gold theme came out.
I tried a new glaze icing and it worked brilliantly. 

We also had one of my favorite beverage stops: A Hot Chocolate Bar. Yummmm.

I don't usually fuss a lot about decorations but this year I thought it would be fun to create little signs to describe the foods we were serving. I used watercolor paper, colored pencils, stamps and of course some sticker bling of rhinestones and pearls. 

I have posted or am planning to post, the individual recipes on the blog individually, should you be interested in making them! Happy kitchening!