Ornament Exchange

Five years ago, Shiloh came up with the brilliant idea of an ornament exchange party to do with our girlfriends.  Everyone brings a wrapped ornament, we play a little game to exchange them, and everyone goes home with a new ornament.  Shiloh used to host the party in her tiny apartment but now its grown so much that we've moved to my house and pretty soon we're going to have to rent a room because our friends love it so much and start asking in October if and when we're having the party.

Since it is such a hit with our friends, I decided to do it for Case this year.  And you know how you're supposed to over-invite because only about 50% of the people will actually come?  Well, I invited 15 of his friends from preschool and church and 12 of them are coming!  Today, we are having a bunch of 5 year old boys over to play games, eat and do an exchange.  What was I thinking?  I did invite parents to stay so hopefully some will stay and help with crowd control.  But, I think our house will be packed.

I decided to make a little treat bag for the boys to take home.  Here's what Case and I made.

Start with an ice cream cone in a bread loaf pan.  Use aluminum foil to help them stand up.

Fill them about 1/2 way full of cookie dough.

Bake (mine took about 20 minutes).  Be sure to keep an eye on them so you don't burn the cone.

Fill with chocolate chips and insert a popsicle stick (you can buy these at a craft store).  I put mine back in the oven for a couple minutes to help the chips melt a bit.  After they sit out for awhile they harden up and hold the stick in place.

Add almond bark to coat the cone and put on sprinkles.  Case helped with all the sprinkles.  Put upside down on a cookie rack that sits up off the counter to harden.  See how they look like decorated Christmas trees?

Put in a gift bag with a tag for each boy.  I used my Cricut machine to cut out Christmas trees and then wrote each name on the tag.

This is another one of our treats while the boys are here.  This was a reject brownie that we tried out.

I will post pictures later of the boys.  Hopefully we survive!