Dear Robin,
I want to first thank you for your website. It was a HUGE help in preparing
me for my first Cookie Exchange. My mom and I have been talking about doing
an exchange for the past few years, but this year was our first one! On Sunday,
December 18th we held our first exchange!
We only sent out 10 invitations and 9 out of the 10 came! We were so excited.
Not sure how to go about it, we decided that each baker should bring a dozen
pre-packaged cookies for each person and one for the sample tray. We did
not figure quite right and included ourselves in the number so we all took
home a dozen of our own cookies!
We started the evening by eating a few appetizers, chatting and with a few
drinks. We then circled around in the living room and introduced ourselves
and why we baked the particular cookie we did and if there was a "story"
behind it!
We then played the "Left/Right Game" (thanks to your website) and drew numbers
for our gift exchange. Every lady brought a gift of about $5 and the person
who chose number 1 got to go first and pick a gift from the pile. The next
person got to either pick a new gift or steal a gift from one that was opened.
It was fun, but we decided since it was a small group and no one stole a
gift we would just exchange next year - no stealing!
At the end of the evening we all grabbed our 9 dozen cookies, all festively
wrapped and were off! There were several changes we would make regarding
our exchange, the most important being no kids! Everyone enjoyed themselves
or seemed to, but decided that we would have much more fun without kids
attending!
Next year we hope to do the same with an even bigger number of cookie swappers!
Thank you again for your wonderful ideas and posting the other cookie swaps
to get ideas from! I hope you had a great holiday and I look forward to reading
more ideas from other cookie swaps!
JoAnna Hughes
