Holiday Open House 2011

We had our holiday open house today and it was so much fun! I'd guess about 50 people came over the course of the afternoon, including quite a few of R's classmates and a couple of RUS's and a good deal of our neighbors.

Here's R using our coloring station and filling in some coloring pages I printed off of the internet before the party.

 In this picture you see our main cookie table as well as the christmas tree-making station at the top of the picture--the table covered with the gray snowflake tablecloth has sugar cones, green frosting, and various kinds of m&ms and cinnamon candies for decorating the sugar cone trees with.

And here are our appetizers: cheeseball, cheese and crackers, nuts, clementines, sliced fruit and fruit dip, veggies and veggie dip and hummus, as well as some amazing chipotle-rosemary almonds and cashews that our neighbor made. You can also see some cherry-almond bark and some pistachio brittle that Grammie made, and before long one of our friends brought some delicious frosted chocolate cookies with crushed peppermint on top. HUGE hit.

 And then I didn't take any more pictures until the party was just about over. It's really hard to remember to take pictures while you're having a party! Here's Grampie trying to persuade RUS to eat something other than candy.

 And here's R with her preschool teacher, who is just like me and gets lost even when she kind of knows where she's going, so she got here close to the tail end of the party. It worked out great though because R was pleased as punch to show Ms. L all around the house all by herself.

 And then RUS wanted to get in on the action, too! Don't they all look so cute??

 And here's Grammie and Grampie by our tree . . .

and Grammie and Grampie with R by the tree! RUS was already in bed by this point. Boy, he was tuckered.

ETA: here are some pictures of the Christmas tree craft--the ones that R and RUS did at the party. R only wanted to frost about 1/3 of her tree and RUS just wanted to eat m&m's so the only decoration on his tree is one that J put on for him.

RUS's tree, sitting next to our gingerbread house that we all decorated together to create a centerpiece for the party:

R's tree, sitting next to her gingerbread house from her school gingerbread house decorating party: