5 Fun Christmas Party Ideas For Work Events

When it comes to organising the company Christmas party or a function for clients, it can be underwhelming at the options presented to you to meet the budget you’ve been given. Or your company has done the same kind of things for years, which seems to work, but maybe you want to do something a little different. And, at this time of the year, searches for fun Christmas party ideas go through the roof.

Maybe, there are so many choices and you just don’t have time to go through them all. After all, this is just something extra you’ve got to do on top of your already bulging workload. So we’ve compiled just 5 fun Christmas party ideas to inspire your next work function.

Fun Christmas Party Ideas – Amazing Race Themed Challenge

If it is team-building you’re looking for this can be a great idea for a work function. Depending on where you are, there are companies out there that you can do this with, otherwise, it’ll take a little more planning and work on your behalf.

This classic scavenger hunt style event suits large or small teams get your group outdoors and creates some competition to make things a little more interesting.

Depending on your overall group fitness, you might want to keep it reasonably short, but you could include things like getting a photo in front of an iconic location, answers relating to exhibitions at the museum, taking public transport to a specific point to get a clue and so much more.

Fun Christmas Party Ideas – Boat Cruise

If eating, drinking and having a good time is high on the agenda for your function, something like a private boat cruise screams fun!

Usually, these come with set food and drink packages, which you can choose based on your budget, length of desired time and even group size.

In some cases, you’ll have options around music like organising your own band, which can also help you tailor the vibe you’re after.

Depending on your group, you might want to consider a sit-down portion of the experience or even combing in with an onshore dinner option.

Fun Christmas Party Ideas – Cooking Class

Cooking classes can be a fun function idea if your group isn’t too large. They’re interactive, hands-on, and also encourage teamwork. Plus, you get to feast on the fruits of your labour.

Most places will include a drink package option or allow you to bring some to complete your feast.

I’d also recommend mixing in a class with something else like a nice dinner or cocktails afterward. Perhaps, an experience like this one.

Fun Christmas Party Ideas – Fancy Dress or Theme Party

Okay, admittedly some people hate dressing up and that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean you can’t throw a theme party.

For family-friendly, you might have a circus or magic theme and get performers in. Or, for the adults, you might like to throw a Casino Royale party, have some poker tables and a few other games, get everyone to dress up nicely and make an evening out of it with cocktails and canapes.

Fun Christmas Party Ideas – Food or Wine Tour

Being a company that provides a variety of foodie experiences and tours it would be remiss of me not to mention this as an option.

These are best for smaller groups and provide a great way for everyone to mingle, explore different places and cater to different tastes. By visiting a variety of venues you can tailor the experience to suit a variety of different people so that everyone gets something that they will hopefully really like out of the celebration.

Would you like some further insight and a step-by-step guide to impressing your clients or colleagues with exceptional experiences?

Delectable Tours isn’t just about creating food tours, I put these experiences together to give people like you an opportunity to unwind, enjoy and even be wowed wherever possible.

Through years of working in events and marketing, I’ve had the privilege of putting together various events and I would love to share these tips with you about what I’ve learned along the way.

Simply download this free 10 Step Guide

Jamie-Lee Howard
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3 Christmas Cocktails to Enjoy This Festive Season

Christmas is yet again just around the corner, and with the weather heating up down under, these Christmas cocktails will both refresh you and get you in the festive spirit.

Pomegranate and Rosemary Gin Fizz

This cocktail screams Christmas and is quite unique with the scent of rosemary combined with the herbaceous tones of gin. It’s not all herbaceous tones, bringing together a juxtaposition of tart, sweet and pine. It both looks like and smells like Christmas, so how can you go wrong, it makes a wonderful Christmas cocktail?!

Christmas Cocktails

Recipe and Image via Creative Culinary

Ingredients

1/4 cup gin
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp rosemary simple syrup (1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1 sprig rosemary. Boil water until sugar dissolves, remove from heat, add rosemary and let sit for 15-20 minutes. Remove rosemary and refrigerate simple syrup)
2 Tbsp pomegranate juice
Club soda, chilled
Rosemary sprigs and pomegranate arils for garnish

Method

Mix gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and pomegranate juice in a shaker with ice and shake vigorously 10-12 times then pour over ice in a lowball glass
Top with club soda and stir gently.
Garnish with a sprig of rosemary and a large spoonful of pomegranate arils

Strawberry Rosé Sangria

This is a quick and simple sangria made with fresh strawberries, rosé wine, and kicked up with some vodka! It’s light, refreshing, and fruity, perfect for a warm Christmas day.

Christmas Cocktails

Recipe and Image via Jennifer Meyering

Ingredients

1 bottle (750 ml) rosé wine
1 cup strawberry flavoured vodka
2 1/2 cups lemon-lime soda
1/4 cup stevia or sugar optional
8-10 large strawberries hulled and sliced

Method

In a large pitcher, combine wine, vodka, and 1/2 of the strawberries. Taste for sweetness and add sweetener if necessary, and stir.
Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 6.
Just before serving, add Sprite, the rest of strawberries and gently stir.
Serve over ice with strawberry garnish.

Pomegranate and Peppermint Moscow Mule

This final Christmas cocktail also looks like Christmas with its cute red and green colours but will require a little more time to prepare. Lucky you’ve got a couple of other options to drink while you’re waiting!

This Moscow Mule is a refreshing spin on the classic.

Recipe via Halfbaked Harvest

Ingredients

Crushed ice
3/4 cup ginger beer
1/3 cup pomegranate juice
30 -60 ml vodka (depending on your taste)
1 Tbsp fresh lime juice
Pomegranate arils, for topping
Candied mint, for garnish (recipe below)

Candied Mint Leaves

Water
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Method

Fill your glass with ice.
Add the ginger beer, pomegranate juice, vodka and lime juice.
Stir to combine.
Garnish with pomegranate arils and candied mint.
DRINK!

Candied Mint Leaves

Gently dip each mint leave in water and then cover in sugar. Place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet.
Repeat with the remaining leaves.
Allow the leaves to dry 3-6 hours at room temperature.
The mint can be made 1 day ahead and stored in an airtight container at room temperature.

So, there you have three festive cocktails to make your Christmas even more colourful. Enjoy!

Need some last minute Christmas Gift Ideas? Check out this post!

Jamie-Lee Howard

9 Delicious Christmas Gifts for Foodies

We all have that friend or family member who finds it painful when they have to hang out with people who don’t love food nearly as much as them. And, we know they experience a whole other level of hangry so we’ve put together a list of 9 delicious Christmas gifts for foodies to satisfy their taste buds.

From products to books and even experiences this list is sure to please even the most dedicated of foodies.

Products

Urban Outfitters Doughnut Mug

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Urban Outfitters

For something fun and even a little quirky, this doughnut mug will surely give them a delicious start to their day. Coffee and a doughnut all-in-one, who could complain? This donut-shaped mug is crafted from stoneware and finished with glaze.

Üllo Wine Purifier

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Üllo

This Üllo Wine Purifier is like the Brita but for wine. It simultaneously aerates the wine and removes sulphates, making it taste better and even easier for our bodies to digest. You can also check out this in-depth review by Wine Turtle.

Water Garden by Back to the Roots

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Back to the Roots

Bring this mini ecosystem home, and take the family on a journey of food discovery!
Back to the Roots solved all of your urban gardening woes with its easy-to-use gardening starters — they have everything from Garden-in-a-Jar kits, Mushroom Farms, and Self-Watering Planters. These Water Gardens, in particular, are ingenious for the home cook.

Books

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin – The Physiology of Taste

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Booktopia

This is certainly and oldie, but definitely still a goodie. Written by famed French Gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin this book is essential reading for budding epicureans. Now translated, the book offers eloquent and philosophical examinations of not just food and eating but examines foods role in everything from our dreams to our death. It is a must-read and makes a great Christmas gift for foodies.

Harry Eastwood’s Carneval (Bantam)

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Penguin Publishing

Carneval presents itself as a “celebration of meat, in recipes”, but is also a highly thoughtful treatise on meat eating. It’s refreshing to be urged to eat less but better. That said, you might need a lot of self-control from the looks of these recipes.

Driving Hungry: A Memoir

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: The Nile

A little more light-hearted than the previous two books, Driving Hungry takes you on a fun food travel journey, telling the story of a great foodie business. When Layne Mosler asked her taxi driver in Buenos Aires to take her to his favourite restaurant, she didn’t expect that it would spark the idea for Taxi Gourmet, a blog with a cult-following chronicling Mosler’s adventures eating with taxi drivers all over the world.

Experiences

Cooking Class – LONG APRON COOKING SCHOOL

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Spicers Retreats

Cooking classes are a great hands-on experience for foodies to expand their skills and nourish their palates.

For Queensland based foodies, The Long Apron Cooking Skill can make a wonderful gift. To be the best, you have to learn from the best and chef Cameron Matthews is one of Queensland’s fine dining leaders. The specialist in European cuisine holds hands-on, French and Italian group classes at the beautiful Spicers Clovelly Retreat extending his passion, knowledge and skills to students in a relaxed, yet educational format.

Customised Food Tour – DELECTABLE TOURS

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: Delectable Tours

We may be a little bias, but our customised food tours are always so popular with foodies because they can tell us a little about what they do and don’t like and we then create an experience specially catered to their tastes and desires. It’s a great present for foodies to be able to just sit back, enjoy themselves, and experience a number of great restaurants in the one night. If they’re not Brisbane based, it also gives them a chance to do a little food travel!

Unique Dining Experience – TEST KITCHENS, THOMPSON’S RESERVE

Christmas Gifts For Foodies

Image Credit: New Inchcolm Hotel & Suites

One of Brisbane’s unique dining experiences is at Thomson’s Reserve. This restaurant does a good job of hiding itself away in Spring Hill’s New Inchcolm Hotel & Suites. Every second Monday, this fine dining venue holds a Test Kitchen, where guests can enjoy a 5-course degustation dinner of innovative Australian cuisine crafted by Thomson’s Reserve chefs just for the evening.

Not quite sure exactly what they’d like? Well, why not grab them a gift voucher and let them customise their experience to their tastes?

GET A FOODIE GIFT VOUCHER

Jamie-Lee Howard

The number one thing people want this Christmas

The Number One Thing People Want This Christmas

I’m sure you’ll agree that with the stress of Christmas and the holiday period in general, quality time with friends and family is hard to come by. Now, you may be thinking, I’d rather avoid my family, but if you’re one of the 69% surveyed by the McCrindle Research group, you actually want to see them more.

Yep! Believe it or not, this study found that the number one thing Australians want for Christmas is time with friends and family. So, put your wallet away, rock up to your family Christmas and you’re set, right? Well, maybe Grandma would say she’s just happy to see you, but let’s be honest, we all want a little more.

I used to get so stressed by the thought of what I was going to buy everyone for Christmas, and we all have that difficult person to buy for! It was at this point that I started to think about what I could give them that they’d really treasure.

I’m quite the sentimental one and believe it’s the experiences we have in life that we remember the most. That day where you did something special, something you’ve never done before, or something that makes you feel alive! It is with all of this in mind that I created Delectable Tours.

If you or your loved ones fancy yourselves as a bit of a foodie, these are the perfect gift! (Okay, I may be a little bias) These unique experiences allow both friends and family to just sit back, relax, and enjoy each other’s company, and of course enjoy some amazing food and drinks too!

I know not everyone is interested in food tours and that’s totally cool. We’re all different! No matter your interests there are tons of experiences you can share. These don’t have to be expensive either. If you know someone who loves to play games, get them a game that you can play together, or if you love being active, you could get bikes for the whole family to go on rides together.

So why not give your friends and family what they really want this Christmas, and consider putting experiences on your shopping list.

Jamie-Lee Howard