merry, merry christmas... {in july}

Last week I hosted my first-ever Christmas in July party... and it.was.awesome.  

What exactly do you do at a Christmas in July party, you ask??  Well, first I rummaged through the garage to see what Christmas decorations I could scrounge up... I pulled out some garland... some red ornaments... and my obnoxiously large sparkly red Christmas trees.

Then I hit up Target's candy aisle to stock up on whatever red candy I could get my hands on... sweedish fish... cherry sours... strawberry rings... and lindor chocolates.  This was an easy way to "decorate" with some glass jars I already had on hand.

While at Target I also stumbled on these awesome crepe paper party balls.  They came in a set of 3: red, green and blue... I just omitted the blue ones, since last I checked, blue wasn't really a Christmas color.

Then I got busy in the kitchen... testing out my Pinterest skills.  I made these adorable strawberry santa's the night before... super simple... and super tasty.

I also made some snowballs... aka sugar comatose balls.  Powdered sugar, cream cheese, more powdered sugar, butter, a little more powdered sugar, almond extract, powdered sugar, coconut, oh... and some more powdered sugar.  Yum.

Then the big hit of the party... Christmas caprese kabobs.  I made 30+ kabobs and I thought surely I was going to have tons left over... but nope.  Nothing.  These guys didn't last long at all.  Cherry tomatoes, mozzarella balls and some basil... it was the perfect healthy compliment to the sugar snowballs.

It all came together the moment I found the Christmas Pandora station on the TV... You can never go wrong with Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas."

The music was blaring and the lights were twinkling... and the guests were arriving.  And as usual, I did a terrible job of taking pictures once the party was in full swing.  But thankfully I found a handful on my camera when the party was all said and done...

Charli, Shelby and Allison chattin' it up in the living room...

Tristan and Charli...

Julianne and Hillary...

Shelby and Karin...

The real party was around the kitchen table though... and can you blame them??

Little Cat on the other hand was not impressed.  "You idiots... it's July.  Christmas... pshhh."

Sorry Little Cat... get used to it.  We're definitely doing this again next year.