1st Annual Jingle Mingle!

Last Friday we hosted the 1st annual Jingle Mingle! I've always wanted to have a Christmas Party of some sort at our house, but I just haven't felt like I could accomplish it before this year. My friend Alisha helped me with planning and prep so that helped too! I asked each couple to bring both an appetizer and a dessert. We were supposed to originally have 10 people, but we ended up only have 6 people, but it was great fun. I'm hoping next year more will be able to come, but I completely understand....this time of the year is super crazy and 'tis the season to get sick! 

Here was our spread. I made mini caprese salads, stuffed mushrooms, marshmallow cream cheese dip for fruit and cute brownie Santa hats. Alisha & Rich brought the sugar cookies and cream cheese with pepper jelly and crackers and pepperoni and cheese. Nick and Jenn brought the brie cheese with jalapeno sauce and crackers and those cute mini pies.

Rich brought some beer for the guys to enjoy, but I also made a yummy cranberry lemonade punch. So good!

I found this recipe on Pinterest...it's brownies on bottom and then topped with this marzcapone cheese mixture and then a strawberry and a little dab of more cheese mixture. It's a sweet mixture....at first I was little weirded out that it had cheese, but these were so delicious....I ate three! 

And these are the cute mini caprese salads. They were so easy and so yummy and so cute! So much so I made them the very next week for Michael's work Christmas party. 

After eating and chatting it was game time. I had found all these Minute To Win It games on Pinterest that were Christmas themed. Alisha and I got together earlier in the week to get all the signs for the games and the game cards cut and looking nice. 

The first game was the 12 Days of Christmas....the object was to put all the days in the correct order in 1 minute. I had planned that these would be hung on the window so we could stand to play the game. I thought the papers could be moved from the side to the board, but the glue dots proved to make that not a possibly. Michael and Rich had troubles!

 

The next time around we just put them on the floor and did it that way. Jen, Nick and I all kind of had an advantage with this one since we are all in the choir and this is one of the songs we sang. The only thing that did make it tough is that we only sing every other one. So Nick knew half of them and then Jen and I knew the other half that he didn't. Nick did end up winning this one though! 

The 12 Days of Christmas! 

Next was Oh Christmas Tree....the object was to stack the cups into the shape of a tree and unstack them in 1 minute using only one hand!

It was fun watching different strategies emerge. The first two round the person with the cups on the right won so they thought that there was something going that made those cups easier. 

  

When it was my turn I used the other cups and won though so that wasn't the case! So fun! 

Next up was Merry Fishmas! This was my favorite game. You have a peppermint fishing pole made out of a chopstick with a candy cane tied to the chopstick with a string. The object was to catch 4 other candy canes by holding your peppermint pole in your teeth and of course with no hands. 

It wasn't as bad as it sounds and it was tons of fun! 

The fourth game was Snow Shovel. The object was to get as many mini marshmallows into your cup as you can using only chopsticks! 

Michael is so inept at chopsticks it was hilarious. Nick and him both tried numerous different way and they weren't very successful! 

This is there I'm gonna try and squeeze as many as I can between the two chopsticks strategy. 

Alisha's strategy was my favorite she came out and started stabbing them. It was so hilarious! It really worked...in the beginning and then her chopsticks got so sticky she was having a hard time getting them to drop into her cup. So many laughs were had....great fun! 

The last game was The Christmas Nutstacker. The object was to use a candy cane to stack 7 nuts one right on top of the other. This was by far the most challenging one. 

Jen ended up rocking this one and she got 5 to stack without falling. The one above toppled over once she let go. Jen was the overall winner for the ladies and Rich was the overall winner for the guys. 

Of course I had to go buy prizes....I wrapped them and let them pick which one they wanted. Jen got the Sock Monkey cup. The ears are the handles! So cute.....I heard later that she got a fox cup a few days after that so Nick has now claimed the monkey cup as his own! 

Rich got the Ugly Christmas Sweater Cookie Kit....so funny! 

After that we talked more and then ventured into the dining room to play a few games. It was 9:30 at that time and it didn't seem like that much time had past and I look at the clock and it's 12:08! Poor Rich had to be up at 5am that same day to go to work and Nick, Jen and I had to be up early for choir practice the next day! Oh well it was so worth it! We had so much fun with our friends and they enjoyed themselves too. Can't wait to do this again next year!