I'm throwing my first ever Christmas Party and would really like some ideas!

[HorridCold]

Hi there,

We have decided to throw our first ever Christmas party at home for close friends and family. There will be a number of Children (our only child - so far- is DD aged 2) of various ages - newborn right up to 10 so I'm looking for some ideas.

We thought we would do retro-theme food so this is what I've got so far. Bear in mind that even though it's retro, it's posh retro food...

Prawn Cocktail (these will be individual portions made in Xmas muffin cases)
Posh Sausage Rolls (homemade - different flavours)
Egg & Cress Rolls (freshly baked rolls)
Cheese & Onion Hedgehog
Cheese & Pineapple Hedgehog
Ham & Mustard Rolls (mustard can be put on separately) (made with freshly baked gammon ham)
Cheese & Onion Rolls (posh onion relish)
Turkey & Cranberry Rolls (made with roasted Turkey)
Homemade Mince Pies
Homemade Pavlovas
Banoffee Pies

Other food ideas please?!

Then for entertainment, my sister has offered to do party games and a disco for the children in the lower ground floor of the house to give the parents a break (the older ones may wish to stay upstairs with the adults). She will also set up the Karaoke system in the lounge and there will be Xmas music.

We thought also of giving the children some paper-chains to make.

One of my friend's husband's is going to dress up as Father Christmas and give each of the children a present.

What other ideas can you wonderful MNers come up with for the party - I'm stuck...

I used to have a childrens christmas party (for family children) every year until having my own ds. This will be the first year I'm not having one for all sorts of reasons. However, I can't think of anything you're not already doing. I used to have a big cake ordered - last year was an igloo with penguins and snowmen dressed in santa hats surrounding it (all edible) and covered in edible glitter so it sparkled like real snow. It was fabulous. Shame I can't post a pic. Then we had games such as pin the nose on the snowman, pass the parcel, musical chairs (with a christmas themed gift for the winner) and an hour where the music was whopped up and they could just run around and dance like lunatics to ensure they slept and I had some peace afterwards . Balloons always seemed to be a hit and occupied them no end and we always finished off with watching a christmas movie. They all stayed overnight so I had plenty of time to fit all this in.

Agree totally that children and chocolate fondue do not mix. We went to a Christmas party a couple of years ago with DD who was 2 at the time. She wanted to spend huge amounts of time being held whilst dipping and eating and generally dripping chocolate all over her and me. Was really not impressed.

Eats: No smoked salmon and cream cheese pinwheels?

For drinks maybe some apple juice with cinnamon and slices of orange gently heated? Sort of a mulled wine effect, but good for the drivers and kids alike!

Activities for the kids - could they do a treasure hunt or follow Santa's bootprints round the house to find Santa's grotto? (Bit of flour dusted in a footprint shape)

Our friends always used to have a Christmas open house. Parents all got drunk, and I have memories of Christmas eve being the Simpsons on Sky and eating a tin of chocolates (Roses, normally) with my sister, the host's daughter (my friend) and a whole bunch of strangers. It wasn't the best fun, but it was Christmas Eve. Please try and do something unstressful so you can repeat it for years to come without going into meltdown. So yes, definitely a quiet room with tv/film and lots of blankets to snuggle up in.

Could you make a gingerbread house and leave it for the children to decorate? You can buy kits but you can also make one fairly easily. Just leave out tubes of icing and bags of sweets. Or you could make some gingerbread biscuit tree decorations (I know it's last minute, but they rarely make it onto the tree anyway) and let the children decorate them to take home?

On the gingerbread theme:
last year we made cookies ( vanilla shortbread and gingerbread) in varying star shapes. These are stuck together in layers, starting with the larger one, with icing, then sweets, edible glitter, silver balls, to make little gingerbread trees.

I love the idea of a gingerbread house but I know my DCs would pick the sweets off and leave a very sad looking condemned house behind.

Thank all so much for the ideas!!

Loving the Gingerbread House idea and the Christmas decorations. I will rope my friends in to help with those. If we all make some Christmas cookies, there will plenty to go around. We may even buy some cute themed party-bags so that the children can take them home.

My sister is a Manager in Lidls and I know that they have the Gingerbread House kits (or they did last year), so maybe we could split the children into two teams and they could each decorate them and the team that win could have a prize...

Lots of ideas. Love the Apple Juice idea aswell!

Has anyone got a nice Mulled Wine Recipe for those not driving?

Hiya,

You've got some great ideas! I might steal some of them!!

As far as party bags go, try www.easypeasypartybox.co.uk, they do some fantastic christmas boxes, really reasonably priced! I used them for e birthday party recently and saw that they do xmas ones too!

let me know how you get on, good luck with the party!