Chinese Auction Happiness
Posted: December 16, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentLynn and I have been having this Christmas Party for decades. It is top on my list of favorites every year. This year we held it at Lynn’s beautiful home. That made my life as the cook easy. I made the cheese Cauliflower yesterday and prepped many parts of the salad then too. That only left cooking the salmon and chopping the rest of the things for the salad to do this morning. Lynn decorated and set the tables and made her Carmelita’s for dessert.
I arrived to set up and found Logan home downloading Spotify for Lynn. Lynn had a plan that we would sing “This Christmas” by George Micheal at the end of the party. The whole musical portion of the party was our only challenge.
Beloved guests arrived and we served them Chamord and Champagne cocktails as they quickly hid their gifts for the exchange under the tree. After mingling we started the game of opening gifts and stealing them from each other. The boxes were larger than usual and many gifts had extra gifts attached, like ornaments, to entice ladies to open them first.
There were so many great gifts so there was lots of stealing. Not one person after the first, just went ahead and opened an wrapped gift. I very badly wanted Kristin Teer’s cheeky wreath creation. I had number 10, right in the middle of the pack. I stole it once. It got stolen from me. I had an opportunity to steal it again. It got stolen from me. Finally in the last round the candy cane glasses I had got stolen from me and I was able to secure the wreath!
During all the stealing the music kept playing Wham tunes of the 80’s and nothing else. The volume went up and the volume went down, despite Kathi’s trying to control the system. Sadly Lynn never got her song played for us to sing. That was probably a good thing.
We enjoyed our lunch with the cheese cauliflower being a revelation to many. I was surprised how few people had eaten that before. (I promise to write the recipe in the blog on Thursday.)
After most everyone left Jan and Sara helped carry all the dishes to the kitchen for the big clean up. After most of the plates were in the dishwasher and everyone was gone, Lynn and I started the really big job of opening the hostess gifts that our friends bring to the party.
Going to a party with two hostesses is a pain. I am always touched that people who bring something, give us each a gift. Something happened to people his year because our hostess gifts were way over the top. I am happy with some cocktail napkins, but this year these gifts were like something your husband might give you when he is on his A game.
I looked at Lynn and said, “We are going to have to up our offering for this party next year, to meet the level of hostess gifts people are bringing.”
Lynn’s immediate response was, “Well, maybe we should get a DJ for next year.”
Don’t be surprised if there is dancing next year, and it will be all your fault because you gave such good gifts.
Less Dana, More Good 