The Winter Shindig

I know it’s two months away, but our White Elephant party is never far from my mind nowadays. Today I sent the invite to three more people that I realized we had neglected to send invites to during the first round. All total we’ve sent out over 70 invites (to couples and individuals). We have 11 confirmed officially attending thus far (not including Denis and me), with another dozen or so that are on the “maybe” list. Yesterday I got confirmation from one couple at church that they are definitely attending. And today I got confirmation from four of my co-workers that they’ll be attending (and bringing guests), so really the confirmed number is more like 20 so far. And we still have 40 or so invites still outstanding.

Denis and I both looked at the list this morning and realized that we may end up with 38-40 at this year’s party. THAT would be awesome. As such, I’m already figuring out the space in our house and how we can maximize it to fit all those people when it comes time to play the White Elephant game itself. We normally have the tree in the front bay window, creating a long rectangle through both rooms which makes it awkward for everyone to see. I’m thinking that this year we’ll move our piano and place our tree at the place where the living and dining rooms meat. This way the tree can be more centered among the guests while they are opening up the gifts. I told Denis that we can move the tree to the bay window the next day (it should slide over there relatively easily).

As for food, I think we’re going to go ahead and start buying some of the items now – things that can be frozen or that don’t spoil. This way we don’t have a massive grocery bill come December 1! For instance, this weekend they had frozen shrimp on sale – $4.99 per pound. So I bought four pounds which should be plenty for the two shrimp dishes we’ll be serving.