cheese board!  I just used some wrapping paper from target, drew the names of the cheeses, and bought almost all of our cheese and salami from Aldi.  I had a target gift card so I bought almost all of the sweets from Super Target!  We had a lot of food catered from Publix – deviled eggs, veggie plate, Hawaiian roll sandwiches, popcorn chicken… my mother in law made yummy meatballs and potato salad.   my mom spotted these cute little potted poinsettias at Trader Joes, and I found the succulents at Aldi.  We thought they’d make a great little takeaway.  I used a WH Hostess tag on them (:

Nothing like crafting the day of the event.  Molly and I  painted these little hobby lobby nutcrackers a french blue.  Jill from The Wandering Whale was so wonderful!  And people loved the mobile bar in our backyard.  It was such a nice night for it.  I didn’t get any pictures but we had a fire going too, and that was a popular area to hang.   

while we had a bar with beer and wine – we also had apple cider, infused water, cokes, sparkling waters and bottled waters.

We hosted JBs clients for our Christmas party last week, and I wanted to share some details. About 6 years ago   – we used to have a Thanksgiving party at his office, and to be honest I just felt like it was a bit boring.  More of an obligation for people than a fun outing.  So we chatted about it and we had our first ever Christmas party in our home in 2016, then 2017… then we skipped last year.  JB thought his clients wouldn’t miss it or mention it, but he was really shocked at how many people said they were bummed that we didn’t throw the party.  So we started thinking about it back in October.  I tried to get as much done as I could in October and November, because I knew December would be here before we knew it!

Here are a few questions I got regarding the party:

Invitations – do you mail or evite?  We mail them out and feel that’s best for this crowd.

Did you have an end time?  We just did 4-6 but we had some people here at 9.

how far in advance did you send the invites?  We sent them about three weeks in advance.

how many do you expect per mail invite you send?  Generally two per invite.  Usually if someone is single or a widow, they’ll almost always bring a friend.  I think we expect about 30-40% of the invites.  We ended up having around 100.

Why host them at your house versus the office?  I think it changes the dynamic of the relationship in a good way.  It’s also a fun way to introduce or reintroduce our family to them.  They always love to see our children run around!

If you work for the same company, somewhere else, or have your own client base … I really recommend hosting at your home.  We don’t have a huge house, and my baseboards are not clean (ha), but people are okay with it.  I don’t often get to see JBs clients, so it’s fun to be able to get to know them a bit more, on a more personal level, and welcome them in our home.