'My Favorite Things' Party

As you can tell from reading my blog (and the reason this blog even exists) I love to plan parties! So this year I wanted to have a Christmas party with my girlfriends. I decided to have a "My Favorite Things" party - it's a great way to exchange gifts with friends and it not be a burden on people's already tight Christmas budgets.

How a "My Favorite Things" party works... I asked everyone to bring one of their most favorite things within a $10 budget - and then buy three of the item and bring them wrapped separately. I also asked everyone to bring their favorite appetizer or dessert to share.

My evite read - 

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes,
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes,
Silver white winters that melt into springs,
These are a few of my favorite things...

Think of something that you LOVE (around $10). Bring THREE of that item. We will draw names and everyone will go home with THREE new favorite things. Please wrap each gift separately.

Also, bring your favorite holiday appetizer or dessert to share. I will provide the wine and drinks. Come celebrate the holidays with a night out with the girls.

Then I started to plan what the night would look like - first, the color scheme - I found cute snow flake plates at Dollar Tree so I went with the red and white colors. I found fun decorations at Dollar Tree and at Michael's (three weeks from Christmas it was all 70% off).

Next, I thought about what fun drinks to have. I found out that the day I picked was National Hot Cocoa Day so that helped a lot - I went with a Hot Chocolate Bar - of course with everything you need to spike it a little too. I made homemade crock pot hot chocolate found here and paired it with peppermint sticks (matched color scheme too), mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, and Pirouettes. To spike it I had Peppermint Schnapps and Marshmallow Vodka. I designed tags for everything to dress it up a bit and used ribbon I found at 70% off at Michael's to attach the tags.

I wanted another drink option (mostly because I wanted to use those cute paper straws - these were found at Target - $4.99). I found a red drink recipe here and called it Pomegranate Champagne. It was so fun and whimsical. I found plastic champagne glasses 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree.

And of course I had a few bottles of wine and wanted to dress them a bit so I made them into reindeer with pipe cleaners and googly eyes.

The food was kept pretty simple as it was brought by everyone so I couldn't make tags or anything but the girls brought some fun festive options so I wanted to share!

So how the sharing of gifts works... I made little sheets of paper that matched the theme and had the girls all write their name on three sheets and place them in a glass jar. We went around the room and each girl picked three names from the jar. Just to add a little to it I found this fun favorite things game that I had each girl read their answers before giving their gifts out. When the three picked had their gifts they all opened them and then if necessary the gift was explained by the giver. Some of the items the girls brought were an oil mister, favorite bottle of wine, scarves, Starbucks gift card, candles, nail polish, fresh tea cup, egg boiling timer, chocolates and make up brushes. It was so fun to learn something new about my friends and receive great gifts!

As an extra bonus, I gave each girl a notebook and pen to keep track of the other favorite things so they could add it to their list for Santa. I found the notebooks in the dollar bin at Michael's.

For the party favor I had my friend make some of my favorite cookies (Kim's Cookies). They were so cute! 

Hope this helps you plan this fun party for your girlfriends!