We're staying at home on New Year's Eve and spending it with our kids.....Last year we had a family friendly New Year's Party, but this year we just decided to stay at home to celebrate. I just spent the last 1/2 hour or so looking for ideas on the Internet to make the evening special without going over the top. I was disappointed by what I found, as the ideas seemed to be few and far between, so I am creating my own list of stay at home ideas. I don't plan on doing all of these, but thought it would be nice to have a list pull from.....
Great Eats & Drinks
Since I am not sure if we will all actually stay awake until midnight, I thought we had better start the evening festivities a little early - like dinner time. I got to thinking what would make dinner fun without going over the top and I came up with a dinner made up of nothing but finger foods or child friendly hors d'oeuvres. Here are some ideas that I came up with on my own as well as found on the Internet.
Wrapped Little Smokies: Make the same as the full size version, but only use a partial croissant roll. Get fancy toothpicks to "spear" each one. Have several dips on hand: BBQ, Ketchup, Ranch, etc.
Cheese Fondue - who doesn't like this idea? I don't have a fondue pot so I had to do a little bit of research on this one, but I found my answer - a crock pot! Forks or skewers can be used in place of fondue forks. I am thinking that french bread, steamed cauliflower, steamed broccoli and steamed carrots will work the best. I also have some large pasta shells that I might try. I am hopeful that the kids will have so much fun with this that they won't realize how healthy it really is.
Some type of extreme mini pizzas, maybe made on a Trisket or some other cracker. I will let the kids assemble.
For drinks I already have sparkling apple cider on hand, however I think adding frozen fruit to each drink and serving in a fancy cup will make it truly special.
Dessert - since I am a distributor for The Gourmet Cupboard, we already have two fun desserts ready to be made: 5 minute fudge and funnel cake!
Activities
Family friendly movie, it's not very often that the whole family sits down and watches a movie together so this is a good time to do so. My husband is the movie buff expert so I will have him pick out a couple of appropriate movies so we can choose.
Again, The Gourmet Cupboard to the rescue.....I got my youngest daughter a play dough pack for Christmas, she has not had a chance to make it yet so saving it for New Year's Eve will be fun.
I am going to incorporate decorating for New Years into an activity. I ran across several New Years items left over from least year and my brother gave me two bags of birthday party supplies. We'll pull what decorations we can from those (I know there are balloons in there). I saw an idea online for confetti balloons, I think we could make a few by using the paper punch outs from my three hole punch, a couple of confetti balloons for each kid should do the trick. I know my youngest got mardi-gras beads for Christmas so we can decorate with those as well.
Dress up: since my kids are both girls, I think we can make the evening special by dressing up,which we don't get to do very often and I know my hubby will appreciate it (also sounds like a photo op).
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