Tips from a Seasoned Cookie Exchanger

Our house has been doing a cookie exchange long before it was popular.  We've done it in huge groups of nearly a hundred and small groups of under 10.  I thought I'd share some tips.

• Check to see if anyone has allergies and how best to notify them not to eat a certain cookie.  For instance, it they can't have nuts, tell exchangers to either avoid making cookies with nuts or indicate whether there are nuts in their cookie.
• Ask your exchangers to try making homemade cookies.  It makes the exchange more interesting and unique.
• If some exchangers can't make homemade - don't sweat it, no reason to get upset.  It'll spoil the fun.
• Layout cookies on a long table.  The spread looks impressive.  We had an exchange at a school once and laid out the cookies down the hallway.
• In small groups, have everyone one at least one cookie for each member exchanging.  When you have under 10 people.  My minimum is a dozen.

Leftover from this weekend's cookie exchange

In large groups: 

• It's not unreasonable to ask to make 2 dozen cookies - I've even made 3 dozen in one exchange.  Not everyone will get a sample of each cookie but there are enough cookies for everyone to choose from.
• Set a number of cookies that each exchanger may take.  If they brought a dozen have them take a dozen cookies.  Then if there are cookies left over, they can take more.  This also allows for everyone to have their pick of the cookies.
• If you are dealing with kids, have the kids go in shifts, random number/animal/letter from a hat when they hand in their cookies.  You can have 10 rabbits in a group and announce that it's the rabbit group turn to pick out cookies.

All in all, I've never been to a cookie exchange where the exchangers didn't behave nor didn't have a good time.  Of course, next year my kids wants to do a cupcake exchange.  :)  Happy holidays!

See a show at a local theater this holiday season

One of my favorite movies as a kid was Auntie Mame, so when I saw a local theater group performing Mame on stage, I was all over that.  And what a great night.  It was not a big production, broadway play, it was a local theater group bringing theater to a local community.  Nevertheless, the family dressed up and headed out the door.  The theater was a converted barn located inside a park.  We got second row seats. The actors came down the stairs.   I felt we could reach out and touch them.   They walked on stage and did their opening number.  The lights dimmed, end of act one.  We watched in the darkened theater as the actors moved the set around for the next act.  At intermission we take a potty break, get snacks, talked about what we liked and who were our favorites.  There was art hung around the lobby by local artists.  We look around.  The show is about to begin, we're back in our seats, and back in the story.  After the big number at the end, the cast went outside where we could greet them and ask questions, tell them what a great job and take pictures with them (I forgot my camera :( )  It was a great night.

This holiday season, many local theater groups do holiday shows.  Go out and buy a ticket.  Dress up and go see a show.  Bring a camera just in case. The tickets were reasonable, about as much as a movie ticket and yet the experience is different than a movie.  The show may not be Broadway worthy however the experience is better (yes, I've been to a Broadway show :) )

Christmas Caroling for the Food Pantry

This is a fun easy activity to do during the holidays that gets the neighborhood involved and helps those in need.  I'm from a big family, and as a kid my Aunt would take my siblings and me around the neighborhood singing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs.  We didn't go up to people's houses just sing while walking around the neighborhood.  The Girl Scouts in this area has what is called Sing for their Supper and it's easy to adapt so that the kids in your neighborhood or your family can help out the needy as well.  Here are the basics of what you need:

• a flyer saying when you are going to come a-Caroling and who you are doing it for, Try Feeding America for a food bank near you.
• Bags - we re-use grocery bags
• Stapler
• Song books for everyone - and they do need the books because halfway through we all forget the words
• Wagon - we've done it without a wagon and it's not easy.
• Hot Chocolate

Some of the collection for the food bank from caroling this weekend

1. The week before staple the flyer to the bags.
2. Hand the bags out.  In our experience 25 bags is about 1 hour of caroling.  Remember not everyone will be home.  Some people leave the bag full on the doorstep.  We just take these bags.  We don't carol at these houses.
3. The day has arrived, GO CAROLING!  We usually sing one song and then the we ask ... in exchange for our singing if they could donate an item from their pantry.  Sometimes when the person goes to get the food - we'll sing something short like We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
4. When all done, go home and drink hot chocolate :)
5. Deliver the collected food to food bank.

Some Tips
A wagon is useful to hold the food.  Canned foods get heavy.  We had a runner, who every few houses that we collected food would run back to the house and drop the food off then catch up to the rest of us.  The rest of us would continue to sing.

We brought some shopping bags with us on our caroling adventure for the loose items when the neighbors did not have their bag.

We pretty much stuck to 5 basic songs.  We tried some Hanukkah songs but I would only suggest it if you know your neighbor is Jewish.  If you don't know, Jingle Bells and Winter Wonderland are always great non-religious winter songs.  I must say most of the time we didn't know the religion and we just sang whatever the kids choose.  I never had anyone get upset over what we sang.  Only once did we get a request of a different song and she wasn't upset, just wanted a different song.

 The houses with kids are the ones that are more likely to get everyone to gather around the door to listen.

Be sure to sing from the book, my version of a song and the kids are not always the same.

Crazy shopping weekend with the kids

My philosophy on this shopping weekend is to go out not expecting to buy anything but enjoying.  Shopping does not mean buying.  Try to find one day, where you can slow down, take in the sites and just enjoy the crazy stuff that's on the store shelves.  Then perhaps drink some hot chocolate at the local coffee shop and enjoy watching the holiday shoppers running back and forth.  My kids have heard about black Friday over the years, so this year we made it a family affair.

The difficulty with black Friday is that my girls want to come along.  Although my one daughter now knows what she is getting for Christmas, it was a bargain hard to pass up, even with my daughter standing right there.  I surprised myself, since it was the only purchase I made.  My kids however had saved their money and went nuts at the craft store.

On Saturday, I felt strongly to support our small business.  For lunch, we went to a local restaurant that buys local produce and wine and then we wandered the streets of the quaint shops of our downtown area.  We even found a Mars bar, which we bought and split up into four pieces when we got home.

Our downtown area

My daughter's artistic view of downtown, guess what she wants for Christmas

More shops on the side streets