Because we could all use some ideas for lightening our work load during this season, I’m sharing 7 Tricks for Easy Holiday Entertaining!
*I received free products in exchange for my honest review.
7 Tricks for Easy Holiday Entertaining
1. Break and Bake Cookies
If you’re super busy or just afraid of harming people due to your lack of cooking skills, go for the ready-to-bake cookies! The break-and-bake cookie dough is a gift from heaven. Choose a few different varieties, bake them, and place them on a pretty platter. Christmas baking done!
2. Use Your Slow Cooker
Slow cookers are wonderful for so many things, including entertaining. Just mix up your favorite hot dip, pour it into the slow cooker to heat, then serve!
3. HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays
I cannot say enough good things about the HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays. Perfect for a Christmas party! Just put some different types of mustard and other sauces in little bowls and place them alongside the tray. Easy peasy!
4. Holiday Spirit Shortcuts
So much of making a fun and memorable holiday party is just in the mood that you set. No need to go crazy here! Homemade winter potpourri simmering on the stove, Christmas music playing, and light some candles. These simple touches can create a warm, happy mood for you and your guests.
5. Gift Cards
Need Christmas presents for your party? Just go gift card! I even buy gift cards for Christmas party gift exchanges. Believe me, people are so much happier with a $10.00 gift card to a coffee shop or fast food restaurant than they are with a random candle.
Click here for fun ways to give a gift card!
6. Pick an Easy Theme
A theme can give a focus for your party and take some of the pressure off you to entertain. Try a caroling party where you and your guests meet at your house, load up on hot chocolate and cookies for the road, go Christmas caroling, and then end up back at your house for snacks.
A Christmas game night would be so fun! Set up small tables throughout your house with games on them. Make a simple appetizer buffet in your kitchen, play Christmas music, and let your guests mingle over games and snacks.
You could host a cookie decorating party. Provide snacks, drinks, and a ton of cut out sugar cookies, frosting, and sprinkles. Give your guests a pretty box to place their finished cookies in to take home.
I love the idea of a gingerbread house making party. Ask your guests to bring their own gingerbread house kit (They’re $6-9 each). You provide snacks, drinks, and music as well as plenty of table space for working on gingerbread creations.
7. Put a Lock on the Spare Room
Okay, this is the embarrassing dirty little secret: if you’re cleaning in a hurry, choose a room with a lock and shove all your extra stuff in that room. No need for shame; this is a thing that normal, intelligent, happy, otherwise clean people resort to in a pinch.
Pile of laundry in the hall and no time to get it washed? Drop it in a corner in your spare room.
Boxes in the dining room that you’ve been meaning to unpack from the move? Pile those suckers in the spare room.
Kids toys all over the place? Find them a new, temporary home in the spare room.
The random crap all over the dining room table? Spare room to the rescue.
You can fake a clean house and still throw a great party. Send the kids in tomorrow to do spare room damage control.
Enjoy the Season
I hope you take away some ideas for an easy holiday celebration. These memories will be with us for years to come. It’s worth the hassle to provide a relaxing evening for people you care about!
Bianca Muñoz says
Favorite holiday snacks are dips and sugar cookies! Thank you!
Nancy Loring says
For snacks in this house we like to have chips and salsa, cupcakes when I fele like making them and always cheese and crackers.
Michel says
we love serving quiches!