Christmas for "Grown-ups"

I always thought that when I became an adult all our holiday parties would be these fancy cocktail parties, but I was wrong. This past Saturday, Boden, Judy and Bowman had a Christmas party at their townhouse that was anything but fancy, but that's how we like it. The townhouse was very festive, including a Christmas tree with a Busch beer can tree topper. As usual, the party guests consisted of all the Kappa Sig boys and me.

Being the fraternity people that we are, it would be a sin to have a party without a theme. So the boys all sported flannel and holiday hats. Being that I don't own any flannel, for obvious reasons, I decided to wear a stylish holiday sweater. I could have purchased some flannel while we were getting food at Walmart; they were fully stocked since apparently Miley Cyrus thinks that it is in style again. However, I decided that I was more likely to wear a cheesy reindeer sweater over flannel ever again.

Our signature drink for the evening was spiked apple cider. Now, I have never had apple cider before because it is usually served hot and I don't like hot drinks, but this one is served cold. So Judy made me a drink when we arrived and I was pleasantly surprised. It was easy to make and super delicious. All you need is apple brandy (Captain Apple Jack) and Publix apple cider (comes in the jugs just like their sweet tea). Pour over ice and garnish with a cinnamon stick. Make sure you stir the drink with the cinnamon stick, it gives the drink a little spice. Of course you can always serve the drink without the brady to the children or the designated driver :)

After some cocktails, Judy decided that he wanted to make cookies. He started making the snickerdoodle batter and when the batter was turning out too soupy, he enlisted me as his assistant. Come to find out the recipe said to "stir" the ingredients together and he was using an electric mixer. So we put the snickerdoodle batter in the freezer to thicken it up and moved on to our next cookie adventure. Next up was the peanut butter cookies. These were a great success, but since Judy didn't have any Hershey's kisses to press into the middle of them, I improvised and put M&M's in instead.

It was a fun and festive evening, and a wonderful way to celebrate the season. I will definitely be making some more spiked apple cider for our Christmas day festivities. Happy Holidays!