Advent - Day 14 - Kids' Christmas Party

It's one of our favorite events of the holiday season.  We invite our friends (8 years of age and under) and their parents to come celebrate Christmas with us!  This year it was an art themed party.

We had three art projects for the kids to do with their parents.  There was a wood ornament, a handprint potholder, and an accordion Santa.

Santa and Mrs. Claus came to have pictures with the kids and families.  They also shared the book, God's Christmas Gift, with us.  It reminded us of the real reason for Christmas, the birth of Jesus.

We also had cookies & milk with Santa.  Yes, I baked all of those cookies except the set of sugar cookies.  I had lots of friends share great cookie recipes...and my Kitchenaide was put to the test over the past few weeks.  I think it ended up being 400+ cookies.  The cookie table doesn't make it look like it was this many...but it was a lot of cookies!  I don't know if all the parents knew this, but on the party favor table I had recipe cards for all the cookies.  They were there for anyone to take if they had a favorite or many favorite cookies.  

At the milk bar, there were three type of milk and paper straws.  Paper straws make everything a little more fun!

Cookies & Milk with Santa

Remember the art palette invitation?  These cookies by Mary-Beth Smith are a replica of the invitation.  So CUTE!

A lot of my ideas came from the Simply So Good blog.  Her son had a milk and cookies wedding reception.  How fun is that?  Janet was so kind to give me pointers for this party.  The Homemade Oreo recipe came from her.  You can find the recipe on my blog {here}.  They were the first cookie to go.  People loved them!

I didn't realize the straws were covering the milks...but you can see the strawberry here.  There was also plain and chocolate.  They are in the containers behind the straws.

The party was a lot of fun.  I changed the party from a set two hours to a drop-in style this year.  It helped reduce the masses of people being there at the same time.  (We usually have 80 to 100 people attend.)

Don't forget today and tomorrow are the last days you have to enter in the giveaway for $25 Amazon Card.  What a great treat that will be for someone to win this holiday season!  You can find all the details {here}.