Let the Christmas Spirit ring
Later we'll have some pumpkin pie
and we'll do some caroling...
This last week was full of Christmas parties to end the year. Tuesday, I hosted the evening book club book exchange party, Wednesday was the AWA Christmas luncheon and Friday was Mahjong cookie and ornament exchange.
Tuesday's party was pretty easy for me as a host. All I really had to do was pick up the house, make spinach artichoke dip and provide drinks since everyone else was bringing a sweet or savoury dish to contribute. My spinach artichoke dip is always a hit and I thought I would provide warm drinks (in addition to wine of course) since it was snowy and cold outside. I found a great crock pot hot chocolate recipe on Pinterest and I bought some Bailey's so everyone could have a hottie tottie. I prepared the dip that morning and the hot chocolate in the middle of the day so it could slowly warm up and be ready by the time my guests arrived. I was pretty much finished with my prep work for the party and still had a couple of hours so I was just piddling around the house when I heard our breaker/ground fault intterupter trip. I wasn't completely surprised by this because for whatever reason it had been doing this off and on over the last couple of weeks. The difference between this time and the previous time was when I turned the breaker/GFI switch back up it wouldn't hold for long or at all. I think it tripped about 10 times in 20 minutes. We didn't lose lights (thank goodness) but did lose all power to all sockets downstairs, meaning I could not heat up my spinach dip, continue to heat the hot chocolate, make coffee/tea or turn on my Christmas lights that I worked so hard to have ready. Luckily, there was still a couple of hours til the party and my hubby (who thankfully is very handy) was on his way home. Ryan ditched his plans for the evening to run to the hardware store to try and get things up and running before everyone arrived. Unfortunately, he had no such luck getting the GFI to stop tripping and we actually had to get an electrician out the next day. Despite not being able to turn on my lights and the cooling hot chocolate (it was steaming when the first guests arrived but quickly started to cool down) it was still a great party and I think everyone had a great time. We mingled mostly but then held a little book exchange. Laine read out a Christmas story that instructed everyone to pass to the left or right several times and that's how you got your book. (And my spinach dip wasn't a total waste, I was able to take it to a party later in the week :-)
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| Notice Cynthia still wearing her coat. When we lost power to the sockets, we lost heat for a bit but hubby got that back on ASAP! |
The AWA Christmas luncheon is the last official AWA meeting of the year and two of my best girls, Tanvi and Nary, organized this lovely event. It was held at Paula McEwen restaurant in the Great Western Hotel and we had the whole thing to ourselves which was really nice. The party was complete with a candy bar, photo booth, an ornament exchange and everyone was to dress in tacky/ugly Christmas sweaters. These two really know how to plan a party and no detail was left unnoticed.
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| My ornament from the exchange. |
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| Love this pic! Tanvi was on the phone with Rainbow City Taxi; since it had snowed pretty hard the night before, taxis were booked so she was making sure she got one to take her home!! |
Friday was the last official mahjong Friday of the year. We were able to get in two games before eating a delicious lunch (complete with my spinach artichoke that didn't make it to my party on Tuesday) and participating in a cookie exchange and White Elephant type gift exchange. I came home with a 6 dozen delicious cookies of all sorts and a beautiful new ornament that goes perfectly on my tree. I actually had to 'steal' this one but isn't that what makes White Elephant fun?
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| I made my Best Ever Chocolate chip cookies. I think this was the best batch I'd made so far! |
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