It’s here…The BEST time of the year!! (At least in my opinion.)  The time of year that you spend the most time with family and friends, eating, shopping, eating, partying, eating….you know the drill. 🙂  Holiday baking is one of my favorite things to do when it’s cold outside, so this year I decided to throw a cookie swap with some of my neighbors.

I have included printable versions of the invite, box tags, and recipe cards I made for the party so feel free to use them. 

My “theme” this year (and last) is very vintage-y.  I used a lot of old ornaments that I’ve collected over the years and my kids helped make some of the other decorations out of paper.  I love the feel and hope you too…

 {Click on image for download version}

 I had everyone drop off their cookies the night before with the recipe so I could make copies of the recipes.  This made it easier to have it all set out and ready for the party.

To add height to the table I stacked all the old ornament boxes and just set the plates on top of them.

 The table runner is craft paper and I added strips of washi tape randomly (I LOVE that stuff!).

My daughters helped with the paper chains and  I made some pom-pom streamers to drape from the ceiling.

For the party, we sampled the cookies and voted on our favorite.  This was more fun because all cookies were sitting out when everyone arrived and no one knew who brought which one.  By the way, you might want to cut them into smaller pieces for the sampling!

After we sampled the goodies, I had a little station set up to make to-go boxes with all the leftover cookies.

 {Click on image for download version}

 I decided to be brave this year and experiment with a recipe I made up.  Fortunately, it was a hit and everyone loved them, whew!  It is SUPER easy and only requires 4 ingredients:

• German Chocolate Cake mix
• 1egg, 1/3 Cup of applesauce
• 1 stick of butter.

 {Click on image for a download version of the recipe.}

 {To get a blank version of the recipe card for you party click: HERE.}

A couple of tips for my recipe:  I used my homemade Roasted Honeycrisp Applesauce and it gave it great flavor.  You could taste a hint of cinnamon from the sauce.  I also drizzled chocolate and caramel syrup over them when they came out of the oven!