Mama Kat Thursday: The Last Party I Attended

The Mama Kat prompt I chose to day is to talk about the last party I attended---which happened to be a  Christmas party. T'is the season.

A couple we know hosted this party, since they have the space and love to do it, which included friends of theirs as well as Air Force kids from our Bible Studies.

This couple has what you call a "sunken" floor space in front of the kitchen counter and by "sunken" I mean, it's 6 inches lower then the rest of the house. It's the largest floor space in their home. It's white ceramic tiled and has a brick fireplace. They have 3 extra tall square dining tables with chairs in this sunken entertaining space they can either put together for a dinner or separate for game play as needed. For this party they also had a long folding table set up and we brought the extra chairs for that.

The over-all party plan was to have a build-your-own-tacos meal followed by one of those gift-swap gift exchanges.

About the food:

 The hosting husband does all the cooking every Christmas we've had one of these things at their house (2rd time, I think) and he's yet to have whatever entree he's planned for his guests ready to serve in a timely manner. The party started at 5 p.m. and I don't think he had the taco meat and so on ready until 6:30.  

The other thing is, no matter what this guy seems to try, he can't seem to not make the food spicy. No matter how mild he promises it is, it's never mild enough.
Aside from those two points, the tacos were good and despite these flaws, I'm always glad they're willing to host.

Now the gift exchange:
These  sorts of gift exchanges that involve people trading gifts go by a variety of names: Yankee swap, White Elephant or Dirty Santa and an have equal variation of rules. Sometimes the gifts are opened first, then traded; sometimes not opened and traded sight-unseen. 

For this exchange, though, we tried a completely new method: we put trivia questions on folded paper in a hat and each person was to draw one, read it, then choose someone who could answer it to exchange  unopened gifts with.
No one could open their gifts until the questions had gone around the whole seated circle of people completely and everyone had a gift other then their own in their hand.
Then, everyone opened their gifts.

Hubby and I had the job of coming up with the questions for the hat. I think we did a pretty good job, too. We came up with things like, "Who had a guinea pig or other rodent pet growing up?" or "Who can sing and perform the 'I'm a Little Teapot' song?"

(You'd be surprised how many people raised their hands for growing up with a rodent-pet!)

The questions provided the benefit of getting to know a little trivia about everyone plus it was hilarious watching a young Air Force guy trying to get through the Teapot song!

Once it was over, everyone was free to trade gifts as they liked.

So, over all, it was a success.

I'm only sorry no one was lucky enough to pull the paper that said, "Who can sing and perform the Hokey-Pokey?"
We ended the evening with a reading from the Gospel of Luke about the Good News for all mankind.

Here's a Group Shot of the Party Goers:

Thanks for Visiting!