ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

Merry Christmas!

We are finished teaching for the semester, which means that Garth and I have had entire days to devote to house work.  The magic that can happen when neither one of us has to deal with planning or grading is amazing.  In the past week we finished painting in our hallway, hung and painted molding, repainted the doors and door frames and actually drywalled the kitchen.  This rapid string of successes makes me feel like we can finish all imaginable projects during Christmas break alone!  We will not, of course, be attempting such insanity.  Instead, we decided to host our very first holiday party in our house, which has been romantically dusted with a sprinkling of drywall dust.

We planned to have a gathering at our house on December 21st.  The guests were invited, the event was hyped.  In the meantime, Garth and I (and a couple of other people) were slaving away in the house.  On Sunday, Dec. 20 our kitchen looked like this:

We had less than twenty four hours to clean up our mess (no time for painting), get some baking done, and play host to some holiday cheer.  I was beginning to panic.

I will not bore you with the details of the sweeping/mopping/dusting/box-shuffling that we rushed around to accomplish.  Our party plan worked out just perfectly for the current state of our lives.  We wanted to have a jolly party but didn’t have nearly enough time cook up a storm, so we hosted a Christmas Cookie Swap.

For those of you that have not attended a cookie exchange, it is a fun and fairly simple event to host.  Every guest was instructed to come armed with two dozen of their signature Christmas cookies and an empty plate.  The plate of cookies is added to the exchange table and the empty plate is used to collect a new assortment of two dozen cookies made by the other guests.  You can be strict and have an official “Swap Time” or be more laid back (this was our approach) and let people pick their new assortment of cookies at any point.  The finished plates can be wrapped and labeled and set aside while merriment with eggnog, mistletoe, and Garth’s new favorite punch proceeds.  Everyone walks out of the door with a wonderful collection of holiday cookies.

For our party we provided a long table with a holiday table cloth, blank gift labels and markers (to label each cookie plate with cookie type and the baker’s name), some grown-up beverages as well as spiced cider for the underage crowd, cookies, and a small table of savory snacks.  A few touches that are unnecessary but added to the cheer: an extra long playlist of off-kilter and sassy holiday classics (if you don’t have the John Waters Christmas Album, you are a fool), a constant loop of old holiday movies playing silently on the TV (A Pac-Man Christmas, and The Smurf Christmas special really get people in the mood), a can of whipped topping left unattended by the kid drink station (these kids are all under twelve, so huffing is not on their minds), a fire (or fireplace DVD), and a tree, or something tree-like decorated with lights and ornaments.

Once party is set up, it basically runs itself.  The cookie table filled quickly and the early party go-ers filled their empty plates and made an exit.  Those that stayed longer saw the table fill and refill throughout the night.  It was great to see everyone swapping cookie ideas and stories about how they always loved Aunt So-and-So’s snowballs every holiday season.  As a first house party, this felt like a great success– we may have started a new holiday tradition!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.