Hot Cocoa Party (with printable labels!)

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas week! Ours’ was busy but filled with Christmas spirit and unexpected Christmas surprises. I’m still spending time with family and taking a much needed break from crafting and computer time. However, I did want to show you some fun photos of a neat winter/holiday party idea that you could all winter long, including anytime the kids are home on a snow day in the coming months!

Remember back when I did the Holiday Tour of Homes? Part of the event was to serve a beverage and a snack. After seeing lots of neat setups around the blog-o-sphere for a similar party, I thought it would be fun to host a Hot Chocolate Bar. (Side note – little did I know that the house before me on the tour was also serving hot cocoa, so mine wasn’t consumed quite to the extent I was hoping, but it still  made for a super fun and festive display!)

I ordered a bunch of white cups with lids and adorable wooden spoons from Amazon. I liked the simple yet ruggedness of these accessories – they really worked with my wintery wonderland theme!

I had originally planned to make cute cocoa-on-a-sticks to use as the hot chocolate but the recipe didn’t work – shucks! Fortunately, I tried it several days in advanced, which gave me a chance to execute my backup plan. I made the Hot Cocoa from the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa box. Even though the serving is for 6, it’s a really easy one to make in bulk. I made four batches of 24 servings and stored it all in crock pots to keep warm throughout the evening. We filled a hot caraff with a dispenser (pictured below) with the first batch and then re-filled as the night went on. It was pretty easy to re-fill, and I was glad we weren’t dealing with ladels and pitchers!

The really fun part was shopping for and setting out all the fun fixings. I searched around online for lots of ideas, and here’s what I came up with!

Hershey kisses, peppermint kisses, crushed peppermints, meltable caramels, mini marshmallows, large marshmallows…

I also set out some pearl sprinkles and green sprinkles with mini spoons!

Whipped cream, flavored coffee creamers, and a few alcoholic add-ins, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Peppermint Schnapps, were the hit of the party.

Last year, I ended up with a bunch of leftover treats so I didn’t want to do too much this year since the hot chocoalte had so many fixings. When I found Pirouette Cookies on sale at Target, I knew they were just the thing to serve alongside the cocoa!

Here’s the table the night of the party before our guests starting coming through! One of the only things I would have done differently would be to unwrap all the Hershey kisses so people were more likely to take them and drop them into their cup. Those peppermint kisses sure are yummy in cocoa, it’s really too bad more people didn’t try it!

One of my favorite things to do when hosting a party is to make cute little food labels for all the offerings, and this party was no different. I had used chalkboard elements elsewhere in my holiday décor, so I thought they would work perfectly on the table here too!

I’ve provided all of my labels, as well as a sheet of blank labels, for your convenience.

Download using the link below!

One of my favorite things about hosting the hot cocoa bar was that it involved very little prep and maintenance as the night went on. The cocoa is simple to make in big batches ahead of time; and throughout the evening, all we had to do was make sure things weren’t running out! Fun.Festive.Simple. That’s my kind of party!

I hope you all continue to enjoy these holiday weeks as we ring in 2014! On Wednesday, I will have a recap of my favorite 13 posts of 2013 – you won’t want to miss it! See you then!