ChristmasShare with us your family's traditional favorites, what gifts you'll be making from your kitchen, and any other goodies you love this time of year!
I love your idea for a cookie exchange! However, since most of my friends have very small children, we might change is so the kids can play while we drink our holiday coffee and sort our premade cookies. In our house, any baking is done with the baby asleep or with the place and run method. Place the baby on the floor in the family room and run to the oven so that you can open and close the oven door before he gets there. He learned to open the oven door before he could walk.
since someone asked......
i will host my 4th cookie exchange this year as always on the 1st monday evening in december, invitations go out two weeks in advance so i can replace a guest that cannot attend or send her cookies. there are 12 of us, that includes myself, we each make 12 dozen cookies, leave 1 dozen home for ourselves and bring the other 11 dozen to the cookie exchange. i have asked each guest to bring their cookies packaged into 1 dozen per zip lock bag, some place theirs on a paper plate that will fit inside a zip lock bag. i always provide a baked potatoe bar and dessert for the guests, a couple of my close friends usually help me with that by bringing some of the toppings or the dessert. as the guest arrive i have christmas music playing, hot spiced tea to drink and lots of good conversation. after we eat the potatoes, i have a couple of christmas games to play like unscramble the titles of christmas songs, etc., dessert is served then we exchange the cookies.
i started by inviting close friends, co-workers and neighbors. now i have other people asking if they can be invited also. twelve is my limit as my house is small. if anyone has questions, please feel freel to e-mail me and hopefully i can answer your questions.
linda/ks
I love these ideas!!!! I have two small children (with another one on the way after Christmas), and most of my friends have two kids. Do you guys think that this would be better involving the kids or just a Mom's night out kind of thing? I think both would be fun, so I can't decide.
Last edited by AmandaTheMom; 09-19-2002 at 06:10 AM.
everyone needs a "girls night out", we are all older so there are never any kids involved.
someone asked...what about a small group. my idea is: for example 5 guests. then make 5 dozen each and leave one dozen at home for your family.
questions anyone???
linda
I have participated in 3 different Holiday Cookie Exchanges over the years. My favorite was an annual event by a newcomers club in my suburb (I was president one year); it was held at the home of a different member each year in the evening and was quite a social event. The hostess provided coffee and tea along with holiday decorations and music.
My office also would have one in a conference room in the afternoon, but it really was not enjoyable as we felt we were being pushed to rush throught it and hurry back to work.
A neighbor once invited all the women on the block to a luncheon in her home that was followed with a cookie exchange, but it was too many things going on for one afternoon.
Getting back to my favorite one by the club, here is how it worked: Each person selected ONE cookie recipe (Christmas or ethnic, etc.). She baked 6 dozen cookies from that recipe. One
dozen will be brought in a tin or on a plate to the event to be placed on the table alongside her recipe & her name for those attending to sample with the coffee or tea as they socialize. With the remaining 5 dozen, she will divide them up into 10 packages containing a half-dozen each to be brought to the event. (I usually packaged mine in clear plastic bags with colored twist ties.) Before leaving, the other attendees select 10 different cookie packages to take home. You'll have an assortment of different cookies to use for the holidays, but you only had to bake 1 kind!
Something nice that we did was to each turn in a copy of our recipe (with your signature on it) a week before the event. These were organized and a decorated cover page was made showing the date and location; then a copy machine was used to make a copy for everyone. I keep all of mine together in a notebook and it makes a nice Cookie Recipe Book that brings back memories. (One woman didn't know how to bake so her Italian husband made Wine Cookies for us; another had a broken oven so her recipe was for No-Bake Cookies.)
P.S. We used the word Holiday instead of Christmas because we wanted everyone to feel welcome as there are so many different religious beliefs.
I had just begun to plan my first Christmas cookie exchange and was wondering how to do it when I ran across this great thread! Thanks for the ideas! Happy baking everyone!
Blessings,
Angela
__________________
"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." Numbers 6:24-26
wowafter reading this I just may, will toss it out to some ladies at chruch and see if they think they would want to and I then go from there. it sounds fun.
glad I ran across this
I havn't decided what I am going to do yet this year but it is either going to be a cookie exchange or a brunch! In either case, I will go back and read all the suggestions on this thread for inspiration!! There are lots of good ideas here, aren't there, bar-bar!!
cookie exchange 
