a recycled Christmas

This weekend my friend Kristen and I hosted a Re-Gift Christmas Party. We traditionally hold an All-Girls Christmas party, but this year we decided to wait and have the party after the holidays since everyone was so busy. And we decided on a twist: trading re-gifts.

The invitation said "Did you get something for Christmas that wasn't your style, was the wrong size, or was just plain ugly? Well, bring it to the party and your trash could become someone else's treasure!" So all through the holidays I had been collecting gifts to go into my gift bag. And as a teacher, I have lots of things that aren't quite me, given to me by kids with the best of intentions.

It was a hit. We have never laughed so hard!



Here is our entire group with all our lovely gifts. And they were lovely. To someone. At some point. Whoever picked them out must have thought they were right for someone.



Here is our friend Kristy with her first bag of gifts (it eventually got stolen from her.) The bag had a Holy Family Nativity Statue and one wall sconce. ONE. WALL. SCONCE. This re-gift came courtesy of one of the teachers in our group who received both of them from the same student. Odd combination.



Here is Jen pulling out a necklace from her bag. The bag also contained a sparkly green sweater, some gold nail stickers, and a Santa oven mitt. We cracked up over this one, and I was so proud, since that bag was from me. Charlie bought me a green turtleneck sweater with sparkly green threads running through it, and it was so sweet. He knows I like sparkly things, but this sweater was really itchy, and since it was a turtleneck I couldn't really wear anything underneath it. And I couldn't return it since the store went out of business...prime candidate for a re-gift.



Julie opened a bag with a lamp shade in it. The lamp shade was courtesy of Kristy, whose Mother-in-law gave her this lamp shade, NO LAMP, and told her it only goes on candle lamps. Which Kristy does not have. Thus, the re-gift.



Here I am with Meredith and her wreath. Meredith is a teacher at my school and is new to our madness this year. She is holding this lovely wreath that she won as a door prize. It came from my house and it isn't that I don't like it, but that we don't have a good place for it. And I don't want to keep storing it just to look at it every year and be frustrated that I can't hang it up. So I brought it as a prize and asked for everyone to count how much jewelry they had on. The person with the most jewelry won...poor Meredith was wearing bangle bracelets. Four of them along with a necklace, a watch and earrings. She was thrilled to win, needless to say.

I ended up with a pair of slippers that I stole from Kristy. I think she wins the award for the most gifts stolen from her and she ended up with the sparkly green sweater and oven mitt. Originally I opened up a little plaque from Julie that had a teddy bear on it and the saying "Southern Bears love Grits and Honey." It had been a gift from a student for Julie's baby, but didn't go with the nursery. It did get stolen from me, so sad, and I was able to take the slippers from Kristy.

We had such a fun time and ate really great food. We always eat great food. MMMM.

I'm already plotting my gift for next year. Look out!