in which we host a party

Saturday morning we were up and at 'em early as we were hosting a party in the garage for our neighbors.  Every December, our neighborhood does a food drive for the Utah Food Bank in lieu of giving "neighbor gifts," and each family takes turns hosting the thing from 8-10 a.m.  The last couple of years we've simply dropped off our cases of soup to the hosts before heading up to Alta to ski.  This year, we'd been asked to host - and since we'd never actually attended any of the parties, we were sort of winging it as to what to do.  Our across-the-street neighbor, who is the unofficial neighborhood captain, told us that all we needed was to serve light refreshments and then take the collected food drive booty to the Utah Food Bank.  Even though we're not party-people, we figured we could pull that off.

So festive!

Decor:  we swept the garage, hung some twinkly lights and put some Christmas music.  Food:  hot water in the crockpot for hot chocolates and hot cider, coffee, orange juice and water; muffins, mini croissants and three kinds of cookies (two from Trader Joe's and one batch of homemade Grandma Bee's spice cookies).  Dog:  in the front seat of the truck where she could keep an eye on things and bark at the neighbors as they came up our driveway.  Weather:  snowing and cold, in the low 20s.

Quite the spread for an 8 a.m. garage party

Approximately seventeen people showed up off and on throughout the two hour window; at one point, we probably had ten folks standing around, chatting and clutching hot chocolates (coffee is not a popular beverage in this neighborhood, although I drank a bunch of it, trying to stay warm).  The most-consumed edibles were those homemade spice cookies - I had to refill the plate twice - and several people asked me for the recipe.

It all wrapped up right on time at 10 a.m.  We collected a decent amount of food and a bunch of checks for the food bank, and had everything broken down and cleaned up in less than an hour.  I have to say, if you have to have a party, having it in the garage is the way to go since you don't have to clean the house and nobody lingers too long since it's cold and there's no place to sit.