I hosted my cookie exchange on Sunday, December 14th in the afternoon. There were 13 of us, which seemed like a perfect size crowd. I used Evite for the first time and it worked pretty well--my guests liked being able to read everyone else's responses.

Instead of having a door prize drawing like I did my first year, I had everyone guess the number of lights on our Christmas tree. I saw that idea on Robin's website and it sounded like a fun contest. I gave out two prizes for first and second place: a pewter bread tray and a pretty Christmas bowl. I'll have to come up with some game ideas for next year's party!

We had an appetizer buffet with Swedish meatballs, chips with two kinds of hot dips, a brie en croute with crackers, veggie tray and sausage & cheese. I also made my champagne punch, same as last year, and everyone seems to like that a lot.

I asked everyone to bring 4 dozen cookies and an empty container. I had some cardboard bakery boxes here for the one or two that might forget. We had an interesting assortment of cookies this year: the most time consuming were some chocolate truffles (technically a candy but they were so beautiful that no one complained!); apricot coconut treasures, iced sugar cookies, molasses crackles, cherry crinkles, chocolate cookies, almond toffee bars, pumpkin cookies, more toffee bars, cranberry cookies, creme de menthe brownies, iced lemon cookies, and I made the caramel chocolate treasures from your website,

I asked everyone to email me their recipe in advance so I could make up recipe booklets for everyone to take home. It was a great time and I'm already looking forward to next year's exchange!

Thanks, Robin, for your wonderful website!