Holiday Party Planning

A couple of weekends ago J and B threw a cocktail party and I love me some classy cocktails with friends!  We dressed up in cute dresses (and required the guys to attire themselves nicely as well), played cocktail party type games, and I contributed my culinary skills to snack foods and one cocktail recipe.  Here are some of my entertaining tips:

1. Interactive games.  Don't count on conversation only or the Wii to keep everyone entertained.  Talking is great, of course, but throw in a few fun activities as well.  We went with the "stick a famous person's name to your head" game where you can ask only yes or no questions to guess who you are and then we ended the night with Drinking Dreidel - fun but dangerous!  And you can have a lot of fun with the famous names as well - we ran the gamut from Queen Elizabeth to Shakira to Scooby Doo!

2. Drinks. While there's usually someone who likes to play bartender (in our case, it was J), it's also nice to have a pitcher of a pre-mixed drink to keep the bartender's backlog down.  I made one of my favorite holiday cocktails: Santa's Helper.  It really doesn't have any stereotypical holiday flavors, so I'm not sure how it obtained it's name, but the combo is truly delicious:  

Start by soaking peeled and sliced cucumber wedges and crushed mint overnight in Bacardi Limon. Then right before the party, strain out the solids and add limeade concentrate, no-sodium soda water and enough cranberry juice to create a beautifully crimson cocktail.

3. Food.  Don't drive yourself crazy with food.  Stick with easy platters to put together like cheese and crackers with grapes (I find Brie and Grueyere are always winning cheese choices), a bowl of olives, and spiced nuts.  Other great ideas are a vege and dip platter (you can buy the pre-cut varieties and then just put it on a nice platter to save time!), put cherry tomatoes and mini mozerella balls on toothpicks and drizzle with salt, pepper, and olive oil, cheese straws, and orange-chocolate fondue with fresh fruit

4. Music.  Dig up a holiday party mix on your extensive cable tv music channels and let them do the DJ work.  They'll always provide something fun and festive (and if they don't you can all have fun making fun of the song)  and that's one less thing you need to worry about!

Have a fun Holiday Party Season!

(pictures from here, here, here, and here)