The holidays are a great time to get together with your girlfriends. In fact, spending time with them can be a part of your self care this holiday season. Over these past 2 years, we have had to be careful about allowing ourselves to get together and gather in large groups, and that distance and social isolation has really weighed on us. After all, our girl friend relationships are so important to our emotional well-being. We had a great idea for a wonderful get together with girlfriends this season that will help with the winter blues AND add to your holiday decor collection!
As we establish our apartments and homes, we realize every day that we need more and more things, constantly spending money. So, during the holidays, we find ourselves wanting to avoid spending the big bucks on adding too many holiday decorations but this often times leads us to wishing we had more! So we thought that it might be a great idea to have a holiday decoration exchange party! Not only will it allow us to spend much needed time with our friends, but we will leave the party with a new holiday decoration with lots of meaning that we can put up as soon as we get home.
Here’s How to Plan The Perfect Holiday Exchange Party:
- Invite your best friends and ask them to bring a friend! This way you get to meet new friends and hang out with old friends.
- Ask your friends to bring apps or desserts to share with the party. You can create a theme for the dishes (like breakfast or italian or a cheese and wine party) or just let them decide what they like best! Start off the party with a toast to the holidays and getting together with the girls and by sampling everyones dish! Of course good music is key too!
- In addition to a dish to share, ask them to bring a wrapped holiday decoration. We’d recommend imposing a budget limit (say at $25) so the quality of everyone’s gift is the same. It also makes the process more fun and easier rather than an added extra stressor on the holiday shopping to do list!
- Once everyone arrives and is settled, have them choose a number from a bowl with numbered slips. Once the number selection is complete, the person with the slip that says one will choose a gift to open, then number two, and so on. We like the idea of incorporating the gift exchange rules where the first gets to swap or pick a new gift at the very end! This brings out a new side to everyone but it’s all for fun and is much more interactive this way! This goes on until everyone has a gift to take home. You can tweak this game however you like, the point is that everyone goes home with new friends and a new holiday decoration for their home! It’s a win-win for everyone.
- Another variation of the gift exchange is to bring Christmas ornaments to exchange. You can also exchange wine or alcohol.
We hope you have an amazing time with your friends during this wonderful time of year! Let us know what you tried that you love!
