Neighborhood Christmas Party

Early in December I decided I wanted to have a Neighborhood Christmas Party. The plan was to keep it pretty simple: I would provide some finger foods, ask my friends to bring an appetizer or dessert, have a craft and play some games! And that's pretty much how it went. It was a such a fun night with our sweet friends. I am thankful for them.

I found this idea of wood chip ornaments and I wanted to recreate it. Shawn picked up some Christmas tree scraps and he cut them down using his miter saw and they came out so smooth! He has become quite handy lately! I baked them in the oven on the lowest setting for an hour, turning them over after 30 minutes. This dried them out and they were no longer sappy. After that it was a big assembly line. Shawn's mom helped me glue ribbon on the back and Shawn helped paint them white, red and black; we kept some natural looking too. Lastly, I painted a few for example purposes. I loved doing this and I think they turned out great! What an inexpensive project!

We had 4 families over and it was a full crew! We had yummy snacks, hot cocoa bar, played fun games and had many laughs.

Here are the games we played and some videos!

Suck it up: how many m&m's can you get on a plate in 1 minute using a straw?

Rudolph Nose: put Vaseline on your nose and then put the ribbon with a red pompom hot glued to it in your mouth and try to make Rudolph!

Cookie Face: get the Oreo from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands!

Do You Wanna Build a Snowman: split up in teams and decorate one of your team members as a snowman: completely wrapped in white (toilet paper or Crete paper), three buttons, carrot and scarf.

Santa Beard: Vaseline your face where a beard would be, race to a table with cotton balls on it and decorate your face without using your hands for 30 seconds. Fun to see who has the best Santa Beard.

The older kids

The younger kids

The Dads

Christmas Bingo: After all the excitement settled down, a few of us sat around the table and played Bingo. {Confession: I love Bingo! If I had more time, I totally would find a Bingo hall, take the kids and go play.} I downloaded these Bingo cards and printed them out at home. They are super cute, but the only thing is that there are only 4 different Bingo cards, so I printed out several extra, cut and pasted to make additional cards to play on. I think I ended up with 11 different cards. I also laminated them, so we are good to go for next year too! We played with Hersey Kisses as the bingo markers.

I bought $1 prizes, so most of the kids walked away with a prize or two, which they loved.

I love my sweet neighbors. We had a great time together. {Finn is the cute little snowman below!}