Christmas Primer Party

Last night we had a little get together with my side of the family. My brother in law dubbed it a “Christmas Primer” because it definitely had a Christmassy feeling to it. I know what you are thinking, “It is not even Thanksgiving yet!”

Normally I do not put out any Christmas decorations until the weekend after Thanksgiving, but since we are traveling for Thanksgiving this year and I got in the mood with all the snow we had, we are now all Christmas-decorated at home. I have to admit it was a little weird having all these kids running around with Santa’s hats and taking pictures by the Christmas tree, this early, but it was a fun!




The point of the get together was to draw names for our Secret Santa gift exchange game. Last year we decided that instead of everyone getting gifts for everybody (14 people) we were going to play Secret Santa and only get a gift for that one person. Some people were hesitant about the idea, but at the end, everybody enjoyed it. The best part was trying to sneak little notes and clues to your person without they noticing were it came from. We are looking forward to doing that again this year.






I thought I would include a couple of the recipes I used last night. We had an appetizers buffet. Joel and Natalie made these cute penguins out of black olives, cream cheese and carrots.


Ingredients:

Jumbo black olives, pitted
1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese, softened
Small black olives, pitted
1 carrot

Directions:
Cut a V shaped slit into the side of the Jumbo black olives. Fill with softened cream cheese. Slice rounds of carrots about ¼” thick and cut out a little wedge on each slice to form the feet. Save the little wedges and press them to the center of the small olives to form the beaks. Set one large olives on top of the carrot slice. Set the smaller black olive on top and secure the whole thing with a toothpick. They turned out very cute!

We forgot to do this last night, but you can also wrap little “scarves” made of green and red pepper strips. To set up a winter scene smear some cream cheese on the bottom of a glass tray to resemble snow and set the penguins on top. We also made some snowmen out of cream cheese and toothpicks.

I also made a cold vegetable pizza. We used to make this quite frequently years ago, but had not done it for a while. It is very simple to make and very yummy!


Ingredients:
1 package Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
1 8oz package of Philadelphia cream cheese
½ cup of mayonnaise
1 pack of Hidden Valley Original dry dressing.
Various chopped vegetables (I used broccoli, cauliflower, red pepper and black olives)
Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Directions:
Spread the dough on a large baking sheet or pizza pan sealing all the perforations.
Bake as directed for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool
Beat Cream Cheese, Mayonnaise and Dressing until smooth.
Spread the mixture on the cooled crust and sprinkle with the veggies (for best results make sure the veggies are chopped into pretty small pieces)
Chill for several hours (my recipe calls for overnight but I normally only do 3 or 4 hours)
Just before serving cut into smaller pieces with a pizza cutter and sprinkle generously with cheddar cheese.

Hope you are enjoying the beginning of this holiday season!