Jason and I have been throwing a Christmas party every December for nearly two decades. While we keep this event small because our sanity is only marginal after our Halloween bash, that doesn’t mean it is a calm and dignified affair. This year, it proceeded in a “regular” fashion, meaning all kinds of rowdy. Allow me to share a few of the highlights:
Our meal consisted of barbecued meats and sides from R&R (my favorite place to get brisket), a massive salad from Café Zupas, and a selection of sweets from Corner Bakery Café.
Cameron didn’t just wear an ugly sweater to our party, he wore an ugly women’s sweater.
I again took humorous, and purposefully cheesy, holiday pictures of all attendees that wanted them. This time, however, I limited the shooting to just half an hour, so I could still dance and prance with the rest of the ungainly reindeer. You’d be amazed how many horrible pictures you can take in 30 minutes.
Jason and I prefer ugly sweaters with nerdy flair.
Rowley removed his tawdry reindeer onesie to reveal another kind of hoofed monstrosity, a reindeer mankini. (Thankfully, that wasn’t quite all he was wearing.) You will just have to imagine, or try not to imagine, this outfit. I didn’t want to be responsible for any PTSD, so pictures of this particular ensemble have been omitted here.
Just Dance is outlandish enough to mesh nicely with our party’s vibe.
The white elephant gifts ranged from hugely-sized Rice Krispies treats to fat “dad” bags. White elephants sure are unpredictable creatures.
In taking pictures of the partiers, I didn’t hold back on the seasonal cheese- as the indoor snowflakes attest.
Half the partiers stayed until the bitter end playing Codenames. So, we had plenty of help carting crap out to our car in a hurriedly fashion a few minutes before midnight.
The white elephant exchange is the only element of our party that we’ve never changed.
As anticipated, our Christmas gathering was a rather irreverent but relaxed affair. Between ugly sweaters, even uglier moustaches, and truly hideous mankinis, its foulness lightheartedly touched the holidays just right. Thanks friends for joining us yet again for this comical Christmas tradition.
It has been months since our halls boomed with the incantations of witches, but the late arrival of a post on the subject is fitting because Jason and I were slower eradicating Halloween this year than ever before. Usually, our crows and maggots are stored away prior to Christmas, but it’s February, and they were only just barely caged. Yes, this year, much more than others, our party experienced some lags.
This year, Jason and I dressed as Victorian circus performers. I was Marvelous Mabel, Tightrope Walker Extraordinaire, and Jason was Leopold Leotard the Great.
Knowing we would be in Europe for half of October, Jason and I wisely started our party preparations extra early. Then, in a momentarily lapse into idiocy, we decided to transform our basement into a wizarding world, a process that required new props and the imaginative rethinking of space. Why this year of all years? Floating candles don’t just float themselves into existence. (Do I need to roll for a sanity check?) Thankfully, we had some transformation help. Over the years, decorating for our event has almost become an event in of itself. On an evening or Saturday afternoon, friends gather and catch up over pizza and creepy scene setters. The conversations are lively, and the assistance is enlivening. This year, Adam even popped in from Washington to put up a few cobwebs; bedecking our spooky halls is that thrilling. Thanks Lee, Drew, Simone, Jacob, Rowley, Adam, and Keith for lending us some of your mystical brainpower and pushpin skills!
Constructing floating candles out of toilet-paper, paper-towel, and wrapping-paper tubes sounds like a short task- it wasn’t.
Jason and I attempted to recreate Hogwarts’ charmed ceiling by painting a long strip of gossamer.
Beyond the hefty task of decorating, fashioning the favors for our party always represent a different type of challenge. Trying to guess the correct combination of adult, teenager, and kid gifts needed is difficult. So, this year, Jason and I opted to give our guests plenty of options from which to pick what they favored, with some appealing to multiple age groups. We assembled 36 kid bags, 12 wizard wands, 24 gothic toiletries, and 20 tween grabs.
The adult favors this year were gothic toiletries from The Bubbling Cauldron, which I dressed up in black.
It was Jason’s brilliant idea to tie the tween bags with rope nooses.
Jason and I arrived home from Europe only days before our get-together. We had pretty severe jet lag the night of our party, so we almost nodded off while tallying the costume contest votes. It’s kind of comical having 85 guests in your house while you can barely stay awake.
We created a selfie spot for Azkaban’s most wanted.
Professional photos are available at our event, so attendees can capture their magnificent costumes.
Not everything was more complicated this year though. Dinky Donuts took some of the common headaches out of catering for us. Their desserts were hot, fresh, and yummy. Better yet, this food truck arrived on time and was ready to handle orders precisely when anticipated. Yeah! That’s a first for our food-truck luck.
The Bingo table is always packed with players.
The preferred craft this year was customizable Harry-Potter-themed potion necklaces- a Rachel original.
Cleaning up the piles of cups and sticky crumbs after our shindig also went much quicker than normal thanks to some kind helpers. Benson, Rowley, Milo, Drew, and Simone all pitched in. You know you’ve mastered the universe when He-Man vacuums your house for you.
We added shelves to a wall and topped them with all the makings of great magic.
Throwing our annual Halloween party is always exhausting, throwing it while experiencing jet lag was almost laughable. A big thank you to the assistants that graciously lent a hand or wand; you are more enchanting than a Scourgify spell. And a thank you to our friends and family that have made this shindig a fall ritual; it wouldn’t be a 17-year-and-still-running tradition without you.
Sometimes life doesn’t turn out exactly as imagined. Some events aren’t as dramatic or romantic as anticipated while others are more remarkable than expected. Here are a few of our fall experiences that proceeded as predicted or as unpredicted.
Activity: The Cannon Ball
Expectation: Awesome
Reality: Awesome
It’s impossible for a steampunk pirate ball with vintage dancing not to live up to expectations.
I wouldn’t actually make a good pirate; plundering goes against my core values.
Activity: Archery Tag
Expectation: Fun and Energetic
Reality: Fun and Tragic
We invited everyone in my family to play archery tag with us one evening, including all our nieces and nephews. I learned a few things about myself and the world during this strung-out activity. It turns out, my family as a conglomerate isn’t particularly skilled with bows. We lost most of our games against another family consortium.
Our tag team was rather ragtag.
You know those wrist guards that Legolas wears? Well, I guess they are for more than just elven frills. Midway through our tag session, I wacked myself with my bowstring while shooting. It hurt, and I instantly grew a goose egg on my forearm that looked ready to hatch. A few days later, half my arm turned a sickly shade of green. My Dad walked away from the affair with a similar limb wound.
With a few insignificant differences, I am remarkably like the heroically-flawed figures of myth. Eons ago, an arrow hit Achilles’ foot, his weak point, and everything fell apart. Playing archery tag, an arrow hit my foot, my weak spot, and everything fell apart. (Sure, I didn’t slay Hector, and I wasn’t exactly a champion of the Trojan War, but I’d say those are pretty insignificant differences.) Just minutes before our time in the arena was up, a guy on the opposing team saw my foot sticking out from behind a barrier and decided to target it. This wasn’t just any of my two feet though, it was the foot I had tendon surgery on years ago. His arrow flew, hit that surgery spot spot-on, and hurt me like hell. (Sorry, I can’t edit that last comment; the pain was too real for censoring.) Jason heard a loud smack and then a wretched scream. Play stopped, and I hobbled off the field. I held back my tears though; I’m tough in my flimsiness like that. My ankle swelled up so badly I had to elevate and ice it that night. I could barely walk for a couple days, and I couldn’t run for a week and a half. D#mn puniest point!
My ankle inflated after getting shot.
Activity: Wheel-Thrown Pottery
Expectation: Ghost
Reality: Coarse and Clumsy
It’s really easy to misalign your clay blob and form a wobbly mess.
As a gift to Jason, I purchased a month of wheel-thrown-pottery classes for the two of us. He envisioned a Ghost-esque experience, but it ended up being more like a 2nd-grade art class. You know, making misshapen blobs that only your mother could pretend to love. At least that’s what Jason would tell you, but I was pretty pleased with our creations. I enjoyed the classes enough that I signed up for another month of them with my mom. She and I had a great time working clay and forming rookie pieces together.
Despite Jason’s protestations, most of our pottery pieces turned out satisfactorily.
After another month of pottery lessons, the quality of my creations… stayed about the same.
Life isn’t terribly predictable. Excitement and drama don’t always pop up in the places we envision. Yet, pop up they do.
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