Our 14th annual Christmas party is in two days. Today we’re really gearing up on the preparations – specifically the food. This past weekend we concentrated on the cookies we always make. Tonight begins the hors d’oeurve prepwork.
We also had the housecleaner come today to do a full deep-clean of the entire main floor of the house, as well as our guest bathroom upstairs since we are having company come from out of town. We had hoped to have her come tomorrow so that there’s less time for the house to get messy, but she was unable to move her two Friday clients to another day for us. So we’ll just have to keep Cooper The Dog relatively cooped up (pun intended) for the next two days to keep him from shedding all over the clean house or tracking in leaves from the backyard.
The house is fully decked in Christmas decorations – we’ve been afraid of causing wrecks out on the street because almost EVERY car slows down to look at our outside display as they drive by. This year we added three new figures to our growing menagerie. This year we have a North Pole Moose, an adorable Merry Pig, and Santa riding in a bumper car THAT MOVES. It’s awesome. But even with this awesomeness, we are looking forward to seeing what we can add to the mix at the after-Christmas sales in a few weeks.
We are expecting about 30 guests or so, including many newcomers to the festivities. The menu is great and it’s hard to convince the new people that they truly DO NOT need to bring anything with them other than a determination to have a good time.
We’ve even planned a gluten-free menu for those coming that are gluten-intolerant. Fortunately, our menu was mostly gluten-free ANYway, but we made a few revisions so that of the fourteen things we are serving, only TWO have gluten in them. We even made a couple gluten-free cookie varieties to give to those folks as well!
We’re getting excited – it’s hard to believe the time has finally arrived!
I’m doing a gluten-free happy dance here! Can’t wait 🙂