cookies, cookies, cookies!

a couple of weeks before christmas, the ladies' Bible study that i'm a part of hosted a cookie exchange for the women in our church. if you know me, you know that this is right down my alley! i'd been wanting to help plan one of these, so i mentioned it to one of the ladies... and she said she'd been wanting to have one too. so the next thing ya know, this cookie exchange was in the works! we ended up making it a salad luncheon, too, which i guess helped take away a little of the guilt from all the cookies! :)

we had fun decorating the tables for christmas with china and beautiful centerpieces! each table ended up looking very different, and they all looked so festive... here's a picture of the table that kristie and i decorated.


and here's what the other beautiful tables looked like! didn't the ladies do a great job?!


before we exchanged cookies, we played a couple of christmas games. first, each table was given a list of christmas song titles that have been reworded. the object of the game was to figure out the actual titles of the songs. for example, "Removed In A Bovine Feeding Trough" would be what christmas carol??? and how about "Are You Experiencing Parallel Auditory Input?" one of my favorites was "Female Ancestor Collides with Rangifer Tarandus"... i think everybody had a lot of fun laughing over these. and the winning table got to be first in line for lunch!

for the other game, each table chose one representative for the christmas carol trivia game. they sound easy till you start to think about it... and poor mrs. post kept getting the really hard ones! there was much audience participation/helping, though, so i think everybody had fun. ashley from my table ended up winning, and the prize was for the winning table to be first in line for the cookie exchange! woohoo! way to go, ashley! :) you can see me grilling the contestants below...


and then it was time for the cookie exchange! there were so many different kinds of treats to choose from...




here's my tin full of goodies to take home! those peppermint swirls were my favorite... so delicious and cute too!


the kids were soooo excited when i came home with a box full of cookies!


here's ethan enforcing mommy's "just one cookie" rule! ha! i'd put the tin near them to snap a few pictures, and caroline was ready to take full advantage of me being distracted for the moment. thanks for protecting mommy's cookies, ethan! way to go, son!


i had a great time helping host this cookie exchange, and i hope we'll do it again next year. we also had little cookie recipe books printed that included most of the recipes for the cookies that we took home... i can't wait to detox from christmas goodies so that i can experiment with some of my favorites from the cookie tin!