That's a Wrap.

So the wrapping party was a success!  And by that, I mean we ate sugar cookies to our hearts content, rocked out to Winter Wonderland and wrapped *almost* all of our gifts.  A snow storm came through on Saturday but it didn't get us down and by 7:30pm we were surrounded by bows, ribbon and wrapping paper with one deliriously happy kitty snacking on it all.

The party was easy to prepare for since my house was already decorated for Christmas and I just had to haul out my wrapping supplies a few minutes before the girls got here.  I made a few snacks and decided to focus most of my "party planning efforts" into some yummy sugar cookies.

My Aunt gave me an amazing recipe in March that I had been begging her to give me for nearly 5 years.  She would cut off my fingers if I shared it on here, so I found another recipe that's almost as good (I've made these before).  The key to awesome sugar cookies is not rolling them out too thin and then making sure to not over bake them so you keep them nice and soft.  You never want them to get brown or crispy.

Here's my decorating station, it's not that exciting but ya know:

I lined up some dip-bowls with sprinkles for easy access. I'm not afraid to say I picked up a container of cream cheese frosting; it's easy to mix up but when you're striving to make things simple you have to know your boundaries.  Right?  Anyway, it glided on the cookies and was wonderfully tasty.

By the way, you gotta get the gel food coloring.  Colors have never been so vivid, so fabulous, so edible!  No more "red" frosting that looks pink instead.  You'll love it.

I like to use cookie cutters as "stencils" to decorate.  

Trader Joe's Mac N' Cheese Balls and fudge too- yum!

Now, onto the fun part, the actual party! The supply stash (probably only half of what we had/brought): 

Wrapping paper, bows, embellishments, tape scissors, bags, tissue, and my personal favorite this year: tulle.  It works great instead of ribbons and bows and a roll of it will adorn gifts-a-plenty. This is where you pretend that I took a picture of one of the gifts I used tulle on, so you could see an example. Sorry!  

 The beautiful Hannah after her wrapping was done.  I surprised her with some peppermint coffee:)

The beautiful Melissa displaying one of her gifts.  

Sorry I didn't get any "in progress shots", I was busy;) And of course there's no Before and Afters 'cause a lot of you cute people reading are on the receiving end of the gifts and we wouldn't want you to see what you're gettin'.  Plus, we forgot to group all the wrapped gifts together and take a shot- whoops!  Still tryin' to get this blog thing down, he he.

I invited 5-6 people but a lot couldn't make it because they hadn't done shopping yet.  Maybe next year:)  It is best when the party is small because each person takes up so much space.  Unless you have a HUGE house or don't mind having people in your bedroom, on average, about 4 people is good to have over.  

So, we chatted, we wrapped, we laughed and we made one of the biggest tasks of the holiday season as easy as that.