My Après Ski "Favorite Things" Party
One of my favorite hobbies is hosting, and I took a really long break from it this past year while I was pregnant and while my baby was a newborn. So this past holiday season I was ready to come back strong!! I wanted to get all my girl friends together for a pre-holiday season party while everyone was still in town and not busy with family obligations yet. So I decided to throw a little “Favorite Things” gift exchange party and you know I just HAD to do a theme.
I’ve been wanting to throw an Après Ski themed party for a while now. We live in a place that really doesn’t feel too “wintery” around the holidays, so I thought this theme would be perfect to get us all into the holiday spirit! Did I make my friends dress up in snow gear on a 70 degree LA day? Yuppp. Did we have to blast the A/C so that we all didn’t pass out?? Yes, yes we did. But we persisted! And I think we achieved such a fun and festive get together.
Here are all the details of food/beverages, decor, crafts, etc. that made the party so fun if you want to recreate something similar!
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DECORATIONS
From what I understand (not an avid skier by any means), après ski basically just means the events that follow “after skiing” — so think everything winter, cozy, ski lodge, ski chalet, etc. So the good thing about this party is that most of the decor that I used was just Chistmas decor that I had or was going to be putting up for Christmas anyways. But I did end up sourcing or DIYing a few additional things that really brought the look all together. Here are a few of the details I focused on:
Gallery wall — since my apartment already has a big leaning gallery wall, I decided to change out a few of the art prints for more Christmas or winter vibes. I’ve collected a lot of these prints over the years, but you can see a whole post on that here. I also added some garlands to decorate the shelves along with a cute star lantern I found at Home Goods.
Wood direction sign — I actually already had this wood sign from a summer camp themed baby shower I hosted a few years back. I just pulled off the vinyl letters from the previous party and cut out these new vinyl letters with my Circut with ski-related directions you might see on the ski slopes.
YouTube ambience video — I threw on this ambiance video on my TV that looks like you are at a ski lodge restaurant.
Twinkle lights in the fireplace — since it was too hot for an actual fire in our fireplace, I bunched together a strand of battery powered twinkle lights for a glowing effect. They were so cozy I kept them up all holiday season!
General winter or Christmas decor — I setup things like wreaths, cozy blankets, candles in lanterns, Christmas trees, etc.
Bottle brush trees & “snow” — I decorated the tables with fake fluffy cotton snow and positioned some bottle brush trees around the dishes to make the tables look like a winter forest.
Cardboard painted skis — I had a big cardboard box I was going to recycle and before I did, I cut out a few long ski shapes and painted them with a retro ski design. Then I positioned a few sets around the party space. It was such a quick DIY touch that made a huge impact for the party theme!
FOOD/BEVERAGES
Here’s everything that I served at the party to fit the Après Ski theme:
Mini grilled cheese bites with tomato soup
Cheese fondue station with lots of snacks to dip — like baguette slices, crackers, soft pretzel bites, salami, carrots, cauliflower, apple & pear slices, potato chips
Chocolate fondue station with treats to dip — like pretzels, marshmallows, cream puffs, cookies, mini churro donuts, strawberries, banana slices, cutie orange slices, and pineapple
For drinks, I had a little letter board sign with the beverage menu:
Hot chocolate
Latte (hot or iced)
Hot toddy
Aperol Spritz
Prosecco
And then I had a cooler set out chilling things like:
Cranberry fizz Poppi
Sparkling water
Coca Cola (in the glass bottles)
ACTIVITIES
As far as activities, the main purpose of the party was a “favorite things” gift exchange — which we have been doing for the past few years and it is always such a hit! White elephant gift exchanges should be a thing of the past because who wants to spend their hard earned money on some junk that the recipient is not even excited to receive in most cases?!
The way we do a “favorite things” gift exchange is I ask each of my friends to bring 3 items that are a favorite for them from the past year that are all within a $10-$15 price range and we put all of our names in a hat three times and we take turns going around the circle and explaining our “favorite thing” item and why we love it. Then we pull 3 different names out of the hat and gift those items to those 3 people. So everyone goes home with 3 different things that are genuinely great gifts. And half the fun is hearing about everyone’s favorite things. It can really be anything within the price range, some examples are books we loved, favorite lip balms, favorite snacks or candy, a small gift card to a favorite local coffee shop, a favorite pair of socks, etc. This year, obviously in my “mom era”, I gifted my FAVORITE stain remover the Miss Mouth's Messy Eater Stain Treater Spray and a bag of my current favorite candy Smarties Squashies!
It wouldn’t be one of my parties without some kind of craft, so I also had some craft supplies laid out for the girls to casually work on if they wanted to! To kind of match the vibe of the party theme, I wanted a cozy winter craft. So I gathered all the supplies for the girls to make these cute yarn monogram ornaments. I got my inspiration from this tutorial I found via Pinterest.
First, I laid out a bunch of letter stencils that I cut out of cardstock with my Cricut. And then I provided a bunch of scrap cardboard squares from all my online holiday shopping boxes that kept coming to our door. So people could pick out whatever letter they wanted and trace the shape onto the cardboard. Then they cut out the cardboard letter with scissors or an x-acto knife.
Then the girls picked out whatever color yarn they wanted and cut a piece to start with that was about the length of their arm span. I had a few glue guns plugged in and we glued a loop of twine to the corner of the letter on the back of the cardboard to act as the ornament hook. And then we glued the end of our yarn to the back as well and began wrapping the cardboard letter with the yarn until the whole letter was covered. If we ran out of yarn, we just started a new piece with some hot glue. Once the whole letter was covered, the fun part was decorating the ornament with all the assorted embellishments I had available — mini pom poms, gems, beads, etc. They just hot glued on the embellishments however they wanted to decorate the ornaments and the completed product turned out sooo cute! They look like ornaments you would buy from Anthropologie, they are so fun and customizable for any style.
It was such a fun and easy project, and the girls left with a few new custom ornaments for their holiday decorating!
PARTY FAVORS
I know favors are kind of a controversial item because people (myself included) really don’t want to bring home more junk. But I think it is so fun to DIY something cute and party-related that guests can take home to remind them of the party and as a little ‘thank you’ for attending. And I try to make my favors something useful or something consumable. So for this party, I thought who doesn’t need a box of matches for all their cozy holiday candles they will be burning this season??
I used Canva to put together a cute little graphic for the party theme and then I sized it to fit perfectly on some blank matchboxes that I bought from Amazon. Then I printed the graphic on glossy sticker paper, cut out the stickers, and carefully stuck them on the blank boxes.
It was such an easy DIY and who doesn’t love a custom matchbox??
I had such a fun day and I’m so grateful to have such great friends who love these little themed parties as much as I do. I think baby Della had a great time hosting her first party with me too. First of many, I hope!
xo Rachael
