Advent Kaminabend Party

I've got 3 posts in the loop right now and hopefully one will come out right after the other, so stay tuned!

On the third weekend of December we had an Advent Kaminabend party. Kaminabend means something like 'an evening fireside'. We loaded up on wood, I made vats of chili, cakes, and I don't know what else, and invited our neighbors and everybody in our new church to come over. People at church were asking us if our home was really 'that big', but we figured a lot of folks wouldn't be able to make it for various reasons - and we were right. Still, our highest count was 24 people at one time, so it was fun!

Our goal was to have a time to see people outside of church and have some fellowship in a low-key sort of atmosphere. An unexpected upswing was that the family who lives in the house next to us actually ended up staying until nearly 11pm! I do an extra English tutoring thing for their 9yr old daughter and even though she was the only kid there, she had a blast! The parents really enjoyed talking to several people from our church, so that was nice. We totally didn't expect them to 'click' with the bulk of people coming from our church and were thinking they would make a polite appearance and leave after 20 minutes or so, but what do you know? They were sincerely thankful for the invitation and had a great time, so that was pretty cool.

The highlight of the evening was something we almost didn't do. I told Stefan we should tell people we were going to do a Yankee Swap game (with nice 5-10 Euro gifts) and see how it went over. He didn't think it would really fly, but it turned out to be a huge hit! People really got into it and I think we're going to try to do the same thing next year! The gifts that were the most-desired: a set of glass serving bowls and an under-eye cream thing (hello, random!). I ended up with a cute set of scented candles, but Stefan opened a set of 'toast tattoos' and traded for a bag of coffee. Altogether it was pretty funny!

It was a lot of work to get the house ready and plan out the food, but it was definitely worth it. Not only did we get a chance to have a blast hanging with everybody in our house, but it also forced us to get the apartment really decorated for Christmas. We're still reaping the benefits of both!