Our Christmas party!

We had the best time at our Christmas Party we threw for our family and friends!
We had a white elephant gift exchange, and an ugly sweater contest!
I made Kylie and myself some pretty awesome "ugly" outfits! And Joe wore a Grinch t-shirt that he let me add a bit of glitter puff paint to!

 My sweatshirt!

Kylie's shirt I made from a plain red shirt....this was pre-bedazzling: we added about 50 glitter pom poms and jingle bells to this later!

I also made lots of fun party snacks!
We had pigs in a blanket, stuffed mushrooms, deviled eggs, spinach artichoke dip with bread rounds, ranch dip with veggies, my sister's amazing guacamole and chips, olives, cheese, crackers, brownies, mini-cupcakes, and cookies!!

And warm apple cider with optional (amazing) spiced rum to add! YUM.

Recipe for Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients (I multiplied this recipe by three for the party, making 36, and they were gone in minutes!)

12 whole fresh mushrooms - white button are what I used, and some mini-portobello
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (or olive oil)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (plus, I added more over the top before baking)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper - i skipped this and added mixed Italian Seasoning instead - basil, etc.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Clean mushrooms with a damp paper towel.
Carefully break off stems. Chop stems extremely fine, discarding tough end of stems.
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
Add garlic and chopped mushroom stems to the skillet.
Fry until any moisture has disappeared, taking care not to burn garlic. Set aside to cool.
When garlic and mushroom mixture is no longer hot, stir in cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, black pepper, onion powder and cayenne pepper.
Mixture should be very thick. Using a little spoon, fill each mushroom cap with a generous amount of stuffing.
(Then, I sprinkled the remaining Parmesan cheese over the tops to form a crust)
Arrange the mushroom caps on prepared cookie sheet. (So much easier to place one mushroom each in my mini-muffin tins - then they don't roll around)
Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the mushrooms are piping hot and liquid starts to form under caps.
Party. check! so there.