I love the way Christmas falls this year because its gives us the entire weekend to celebrate and get in the spirit. On Saturday, My family is (Finally) decorating our Christmas tree at my parents which I’m really excited for and I’m looking forward to baking and decorating Christmas cookies.
Last week I hosted my girlfriends and sisters for a Christmas themed wine night. I wanted some fun festive activities that we could do while we caught up and hung out. We ended up decorating these adorable oversized gingerbread cookies that I found at Whole Foods. I thought they would be much easier and a little less time consuming than decorating an entire gingerbread house! We also decorated ornaments and hosted a gift exchange.
I wanted to share photos from our fun night and a few other ideas I had for ways you can celebrate starting this weekend.
- Host a Gingerbread House or Gingerbread Cookie Decorating Contest: If you can’t find the large gingerbread cookies I got at Whole Foods, you can still of course, decorate gingerbread houses or decorate/make smaller gingerbread men. I think it would be cute for each person to make a gingerbread family! Whatever you decide to decorate, I think it would be fun to make a contest out of it. Rachel Parcel always hosts an amazing gingerbread house contest which I’m totally envious of. Maybe one day I’ll get it together and host one of my own with family and friends!
- DIY Ornament Decorating: There are so many cute ways to decorate ornaments on Pinterest and most of them are really easy to do which makes this a great activity if you have little ones or cute little cousins, nieces or nephews in town. Here are a few of my favorite Ornament Decorating tutorials:
- Christmas Cookie Exchange: My mom does this with her girlfriends every year and it such a fun idea. Each person the group pick a recipe and brings all the ingredients they need to one person’s house and they all spend the afternoon baking together. At the end, they all exchange cookies so everyone goes home with a huge tray of a bunch of different cookies and no one has to worry about dessert!
- Make Christmas Crackers: I love the idea of these cute Christmas Crackers to hand out at Christmas dinner or use to decorate your place settings, but they can be kind of pricey and it looks like they usually just have junky stuff inside them so I’m thinking about making my own this weekend! I thought it would be fun to put small white elephant gifts in them, candy or something sentimental! Here is a tutorial on how you can make them yourself!
- Christmas Movie Marathon: I know this doesn’t sound like the most original idea but I include it for those who don’t want to have to do too much work but need a reminder that despite all the gift wrapping, cooking and baking you have to do, you still need to make time to enjoy the holiday season. Set a time with you family or friends, pour some wine or hot coco and put on a Christmas Movie Marathon. To make it a little extra special put together a simple hot coco bar (Click to download some adorable printables) or popcorn bar. These are my favorite Christmas Movies and on my watch list for this weekend:
- Christmas Vacation
- The Holiday
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas
- It’s a Wonderful Life
- Elf!
