{Real Parties} Office Holiday Party - Sweets Station

As it goes, with me being a self-proclaimed 'party planner extraordinaire' (I giggle) - I decided to take the helm this year and plan our department pot luck. (BTW, if you're new to reading this blog, I do have a day job that, albeit I'm grateful to have, it pales in comparison to the job I get full life out of - being a party planner.....EXTRAORDINAIRE!!!!) We usually have one every year, but put the kabbash on it for the past two years because our group downsized a bit, but for whatever reason and I can't remember why, this year we were all gung ho to just have another one!!! Anyhoo, everyone brought in their favorite food dishes and I ambitiously decided to set up a sweets station!!!! Yay me....it was a lot of work - but so fun....and sooooo rewarding (in my head).

I created this printable Christmas Party set specifically for my Etsy shop - but felt compelled to use some of the the printables for the table set up.  I found out early in the summer that the happenin' color for xmas this year would be red and turquoise or light blue, so I went with that for our color scheme.  I used a roll of gift wrap I found at the discount store and my Christmas pom-pom garland as the backdrop.

A great tip on making a sweets table is to go to your local grocery store and pick out what you like and present it fabulously! I found a lot of really delicious treats at my local Aldi (by the by....I love Aldi for this reason only - they have AMAZING treats that you can't get anywhere else, they look and taste gourmet, but you pay a fraction of what you'd pay at a fancy high end food store....just sayin'). 

With the schedule I have right now, I didn't have much time to make a lot of desserts from scratch, but I did have fun dippin' stuff into chocolate and making it look pretty.  I was able to make chocolate dipped pretzels, cake pops and snowballs for my display!

I also was dying to make a hot chocolate bar.  I placed a large carafe of hot chocolate on the display and put a varied selection  of marshmallows on a tiered stand and in glass containers. Guests were also able to use chocolate peppermint sticks as stirrers and crushed mints, whipped cream and chocolate syrup for toppings!

I'm really glad we were able to do a holiday pot luck this year, it's always a blast and I'm especially happy that I was able to spread some 'sweet' Christmas love to my co-workers!