Sharing Seasonal Joys!

I am feeling so blessed and fortunate this year to be filled with the Christmas spirit and able to enjoy some time celebrating with others.

  Luckily for me, I've also been getting most Sundays off.  Today my husband and I are looking forward to going to a Christmas party with our cruising fleet members from the Sailing Club.  We are going to a members house this year.  I am excited about it because even though we all love going to our club house for events, this makes it even a little more personal. 

 Tomorrow, I am off as well and have finally been able to coordinate a shopping date with my BFF.  We are driving an hour and half to an outlet mall that has a Pottery Barn outlet store.  Woohoo! 

Last weekend I was invited to my very first cookie swap and was so excited that I was able to attend.  I have always wanted to go to one of these but had never been invited to one.  I would really love to host one of these myself one year too.  It was so much fun!  I didn't take the camera to the party, but wanted to share the rewards I came home with.

Yummmm...eee!  Pretty nice stash huh?

 I had such a good time.  I was such a joy to visit with my friend and getting to meet a few new friends as well. Each person attending was to bring five dozen cookies.  One dozen to be eaten at the party and four dozen to share.  I was quite impressed that some ladies actually took the time to individually bag all their share cookies as well.

It was all I could do to find the time to bake my cookies.  My cookies were the candy cane looking sugar cookies shown on the top left corner of this photo, except that one is broken.  LOL!   I took the easy way out and just divided a batch of sugar cookies in half and added red food coloring to one half.  I rolled our a bit of dough from both the red and white batch's into snakes like you used to do as a kid with play dough.  Then I twisted them around each other and made the shape of a candy cane.  Next, I decided to flatten them out a bit on the cookie sheet with my hand so they would bake together without falling apart.  I may not flatten them out so much next time but was pretty pleased with how they turned out anyway.

I was going to put my loot in my Christmas tree cookie jar but changed my mind because I was afraid we would forget about them.  Out of sight, out of mind you know!

So I put out a few decorative paper plates and napkins instead and...

...put them on the counter for all to enjoy anytime.

Now if you think that sounded fun, just hold on because you haven't heard it all yet!

This was no ordinary cookie swap yall!  It was a Cookie AND Funky Sock Swap!

LOL!

Isn't that the funniest thing you've ever heard of?  I thought so too!  Basically it's a party where in addition to the cookie swap you bring a pair of "Funky Socks"  all wrapped up to share in a Chinese gift exchange.  First, we all drew numbers and each got to pick a gift off the table and unwrap it.  Then we all drew numbers again and got to choose whether we wanted to keep our socks or change them out with another s.  It was so fun!

There were so many cute and interesting looking socks from Holiday socks to ornamental to even thigh high socks.  Those were a hoot!  The gift I brought was a two pack of fuzzy zebra socks I bought from work and they were traded off a few times.  I guess I'm not the only one wild about Zebra.    I got really lucky and ended up with the next to the highest number for the trade off and was able to be the last to choose at the end.  I choose a pair from another lady that I had my eye on because they are fuzzy silk.  I've got a few pair of silk socks already and can tell you they feel devine!

Here's the socks I came home with from the party!

Cute, cute,cute!!!  

I am linking up to Seasonal Sunday today to share a few pleasures of the season.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.  I hope you are enjoying the holidays so far as well!

Take the time to enjoy the season when you can. 

 It is a blessing!