A Few Christmas Party Ideas For Those Who Like To Plan Ahead.
There is absolutely no harm in planning your festivities early, and 2015 is no exception. Here at UK Christmas World we’re already in the Christmas spirit, so we wanted to share with you some of this year’s Christmas Party ideas! Whether you are looking for a family friendly gathering, or an adults only ‘do’ we’ve got everything covered!
Christmas time is family time, so get all the children excited by planning an extra special party. Choose a theme that they’ll love, perhaps something North Pole and Santa based, Candyland and Cookies or just a good old fashioned Winter Wonderland.
Welcome to Candyland!
It’s all about the décor…
This is guaranteed to make the children smile! Go to town on decorations to create the perfect atmosphere – everything red, white, sparkly and sweetie orientated! Try to create an effect with coloured balloons at the entrance – perhaps a candy arch way or lollipop bouquets. You could get really arty and create your own gingerbread house! Find some large pieces of cardboard to paint and add decorations to; cotton wool, ‘giant jelly babies’ and other sweet treats, you can easily find inspiration from pictures online. The kids would love to explore inside and would be great for photo opportunities for all the guests. Another fantastic idea would be to create hanging decorations from mini marshmallows. Insert them onto thin thread or fishing wire and suspend from the ceiling or doorways for a simple but magical addition to your decorations, guests could always pinch a few on their way out. Fairy lights are also a must, when the sun goes down they are the perfect way to keep the cosy Christmassy atmosphere.
Available from UK Christmas World, our 35 Battery Powered LED Party Lights (Multi Coloured) would be the ideal addition to your party decorations. The colours of the LED’s fit the theme perfectly and mimic your brightly coloured vibe of the celebrations.
Invitation Inspiration…
The invitations need to be really special too so you could create personalised Candyland invitations. You can put your creative skills to the test and create a computerised version for the guests. Go crazy with fancy fonts and images, maybe include a little festive poem incorporating the guests’ names. This is an easy and cost effective way to produce your invitations, and guests will appreciate the personal touch. They are also easy to distribute as they can be posted to guests who may live a little further away. Another great idea for invitations, and you can get the kids involved too, is to produce paper or card cut out gingerbread men, get the children to decorate them all individually, then you could always put all the details of the event on the back of their handiwork! Again these have a lovely personalised touch, and can be created cheaply at almost no cost. (It keeps the children busy for a couple of hours too!)
Play Time…
There are lots of ways to have fun in Candyland! Set up lots of different games that both children and adults will enjoy, here are just a few ideas:
Sweetshop Bingo
Guess the Candy – you can create versions for kids and adults by altering the difficulty. A candy based quiz where you have to match clues to famous confectionary for example, pre-school shock (Kinder Surprise), mean laugh (snicker) etc.
Sweetie Relay Race – a variation of the above (as you may use similar clues). Fill a children’s ball pool with balls or other fillers such as tissue paper or shredded paper or all of them together, with different sweets and chocolate bars buried inside. Split all players into 2 teams, queued up behind the starting line. Each time has to take turns solving the clue and hunting in the ball pool for the correct sweet. When they find it they must be placed in the teams candy jar. Very good fun for all ages and tests team work skills too!
Candy Cane Hunt – Hide a candy cane around the house, or garden (weather depending) and race to find it! Prizes for winners.
Candy Piñata – Can be made simply and effectively from papier mâché!
Taste the Rainbow – Spread a big bag of skittles (you may need more than one) onto a table. Assign each player a plastic cup with their name on and a drinking straw. Players have a set amount of time to suck as many skittles as they can onto the straw and drop in their cup.
Set up a Candyland Photo Booth – use your homemade giant gingerbread house or provide other fun props and backdrops,
Candyland Menu…
One of the best food options for this kind of party would be a finger buffet. Lots of little tasty treats that the guests can get stuck into whenever they get peckish. Be sure to dress the table with lots of candy themed decorations – paper plates, table cloths etc. There are lots of easy options for dessert of course, there are so many amazing ideas for cupcake toppings, cute cake pops and other mini cakes and treats. You could also run a ‘candy bar’ for the guests, children and adults alike will love this. Buy a variety of sweets in bulk and set out in glass jars, provide paper bags and let the guests help themselves to the sweetie shop
It’s always nice to take something home too. A great idea involving party favours is a Punch Box. Decorate a board in your own original way, but leave holes in the card as part of the design. Place goodie packages inside the holes and cover in different coloured tissue paper. When the guests leave they punch into one of the holes and the treats that they grab inside are theirs to take away! Kids will especially love this fun idea!
Adults Only Party Ideas:
The best adult party ideas usually involve food and drink or both! You could organise a Christmas drink themed cocktail party or a fancy food dinner party, or a combination of both.
A great idea for a perfect dinner party is to ask guests to cook up their own creations and bring them along, you can all taste each other’s dishes this way (and less of a job prepping for you!). You can choose to make requirements with ingredients so dishes are Christmas themed e.g. turkey, potatoes, Christmas cake/pudding themed desserts, cranberries, nuts, stuffing, ham, mince pies, cheeses, salads. Just make sure you let everyone know, so the meal is of equal variety and you don’t end up with too much of something!
Christmas cocktails are a great way to really get the party started, whether this is the only event at your party or an after dinner celebration, it is bound to go down a treat. There are so many interesting recipes to get you inspired. Using typical Christmas tipples in your cocktails is a great way to keep the festive theme going, here is just one recipe found from www.bbcgoodfood.com which is really easy to recreate, to give you a taste, there are many others that would be great choices such as the mince pie martinis, Christmas snowball and cranberry sours.
Christmas Cosmopolitan
500ml vodka
500ml ginger wine
1l cranberry juice
Juice of 5 limes, keep zest for garnish
Sliced stem ginger
Mix the vodka and ginger wine in a jug. Stir in the cranberry juice, lime juice and some sliced stem ginger. Garnish with lime zest, if you like.
Plan ahead a list of cocktails, perhaps a little menu to give to the guests and they can taste them all, or if your booze cupboard is fully stocked, get all the bottles out and let the guests get creative and mix up their own!
Because there are no children around, you can really add something a bit more special into the decorations too, it’s less likely to get spoiled! So go to town on the Christmassy feel, make some DIY decorations such as your own festive snow globes, fairy light centre pieces or other homemade trimmings (keep an eye out on our website for upcoming guides on how to create your own DIY decorations!)
Here at UK Christmas World our 180cm Garland with Berries and Snow would be perfect to add a lovely feature to your dining table, you could even add lights to it for something even more special.
We hope that this has helped to inspire you for the festivities this year, to help you plan the most magical and memorable Christmas party for all!