Galentine’s parties are becoming more and more popular and are a perfect excuse to get together with your favorite girlfriends, eat good food and drink rosé. Every year we host a Holiday get together with a group of friends where we decorate Christmas cookies and exchange gifts white elephant style. This past holiday season got so busy for everyone that we decided to push it back till after the holidays. The date was set for February 1st so a Galentine’s party was fitting for the occasion. With the change of the theme we decided to mix up the gift exchange this year and do a Favorite Things gift exchange. We decided to continue with the tradition of cookie decorating and decorated Valentine’s cookies. Everyone had such a great time we decided to make this our new tradition every year!
So what is a Favorite Things Party?
A Favorite Things Party is where each guest brings some of their favorite items to do a gift exchange with. The number of items, quantity of each item and price point is typically determined by the host and included in the invitation. Keep in mind the number of guests attending and your group of ladies when deciding this. We had a smaller group totaling nine people. We wanted to keep the amount that everyone spent around $30 so we decided to have each guest pick one favorite item of theirs that was around $10 and bring three of them. If you have a larger group or want more of a variety you can have each guest pick three different items and bring three of each item for a total of nine items. Each item can be anywhere from $5 to $20+ depending on how much everyone wants to spend.
What to Bring?
At first finding a favorite thing around $10 proved to be a lot harder than we all thought it would be, but at least for us once we thought of one item we soon came up with several others. Gifts can be anything from a favorite beauty product, accessory, home item or even a food or beverage. Here is a list of what everyone brought to our party: Native Deodorant, Sarah Briggs hoop earrings, Batiste Dry Shampoo, Miracle Whisk, Variety of vegetable seeds, mini Anthropologie Volcano candle, champagne bottle stopper, Stasher reusable snack bags and Lambrusco sparkling red wine. Can you guess which item was the most popular and was taken first? We’ll reveal later in this post.
How it Works
As a host make sure you have a place for everyone to put their gifts. We used our collection of cake stands to create an area for everyone to display their favorite thing. You could also use trays, baskets, wood rounds, plates, etc. Just look around your house and see what you have. As guests arrive they will display their items. While everyone is mingling at the beginning of the party they can check out the table and see what everyone brought. Before you start the exchange have each guest tell why their item is a favorite thing.
Since each guest brought three of their item we broke the exchange into three rounds. Each round everyone drew a number and the person who drew number one got to pick an item off the table. Number two went next and so on. For round two we redrew numbers so everyone picked in a different order and the same for round three. By the end each guest will go home with three different favorite things. Feel free to break up the rounds with activities in between.
So what item did you think was the most popular? The Native deodorant flew off the table and all three were gone before we were halfway through the first round. The Volcano candle from Anthropologie was a close second, but all the gifts on the table were such great items. We loved seeing what each person came up with to share with the group!
Food and Beverages
A party wouldn’t be complete with out something to eat and drink! We decided to keep with the theme and have each guest bring a favorite appetizer/snack. Items included stuffed mushrooms, tater tots, homemade clam dip, donuts, chips and salsa, naan with hummus and baba ganoush, veggies, chicken tenders and of course rosé and bubbly.
Prior to the party we made sugar cookies and buttercream for cookie decorating. We had a tray setup for each guest that included their cookies and a pipping bag of frosting, along with various sprinkles around the table. We had a lot of fun showing everyone how to decorate their cookies using different piping tips. We could go on even more about setting up a cookie decorating party, but this may need to be a post all on it’s own.
If you are looking for a fun way to spice up your next girls night we highly recommend a Favorite Things Party. They are so fun and like we mentioned above you can set your own limits on what everyone brings. If you have any questions about throwing your own Favorite Things Party feel free to comment below. Thank you for following along and supporting our blog!
