A Time to Gather
The Party I Almost Canceled
To everything, there is a season. ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1
After months of planning, preparing and planting, there comes a season to gather. I’m not talking about the garden today. I’m talking about life. About choosing to gather with friends and family.
Sounds simple enough until you look around and realize your circle of friends is smaller than it used to be, and some of those relationships feel pretty distant. The good news? You can change that. Sometimes, all it takes is a few seconds of courage to extend an invitation. And sometimes, that one invitation turns into something you never saw coming.
Here’s how it played out for me.
First, it started with a theme: the swap party. Like all good ideas, I saw swap parties on my Instagram feed, and they genuinely intrigued me. Everyone seemed happy to participate. The creative vibe lured me in. So that’s it. I sold myself on a swap party. But what’s a swap party without friends? What I lack in friends, I have in my daughters and my daughter-in-law.
I started a group text with my girls and asked if they’d like to help me host. I would do all the work, if they each invited a friend. To my surprise, they all said yes and a core hostess group was born. If each of us (4) invited 1 friend to the party, that would be 8 friends. That’s a perfect number for a starter party. We now had a guest list.
Like any party, it needed a fun, themed invitation, so I got to work and created a fall-themed swap party invite, set up a sign-up link and sent the girls the invite details. We each were responsible for inviting and following up with our friend. We decided to go for “the more, the merrier” so we each invited 2 friends, aiming for a guest list of 12 friends.
We started planning this party about 6 weeks out, to give everyone enough time to make their items for the swap. For a swap party, everyone makes a handmade item for each guest + herself. You set out the items to swap in a market style, and everyone shops the market, collecting one of each item. For instance, if you have 10 guests, you’d make 10 of your item + 1 for yourself so you get the complete swap collection, too. As the hostess, I made 2 items in quantity of 10, just in case we had a last-minute cancellation.
During those 6 weeks of waiting for the swap party, I wanted to just cancel it about 5 times. It was too much work. No one was responding. It costs money to host it. I’d have to clean the house. All the excuses rolled around in my brain. And I almost missed out on a huge blessing and inspiration that trickled down from this party.
Let’s shift gears and talk about the functional parts of hosting a swap party.
MENU
About 2 weeks before the party, we each followed up with our friends and started getting RSVPs. I couldn’t cancel now, so I had to lean in and embrace it. From what I’d seen on the gram, most swap parties had food and a secondary activity. I knew I wanted to keep the menu simple. We chose mid-afternoon on a Sunday, so it wasn’t a full meal time, just more of an afternoon coffee and snack time. Something salty. Something sweet. Something to drink.
DECOR
As for the decor, “fall” was the theme so it was pretty simple. We were hosting in the backyard, around the pool, so I brought a handful of outdoor decorations typically reserved for the front yard and staged them by the pool. A quick visit to Walmart gave me a chance to grab a white pumpkin and a few mini pumpkins for under $10. Hobby Lobby won for tablecloths. I did need several tablecloths for the food, drink, seating, and market tables. So I mostly used what I had, and splurged on a fall, plaid table cloth. Since they only sell long, rectangular tablecloths, I bought an extra one and cut it in half for the food and the drink tables, $25. I also picked up a roll of brown kraft paper for $4.
The kraft paper became one of my favorite items. We used it over the top of my market tables. Made a “Swap Party” banner from it. And my favorite way to use it was wrapping the top of my fire pit table, to give a surface for my Fall Charm Bar where I used a white chalk pen to give instructions and add accents to an otherwise low-key area. Probably the best $4 spent on the party.
ACTIVITY
The Fall Charm Bar was a decision I made about 10 days before the party. From my Instagram and YouTube research, it looked like every Swap Party had a few core elements: (1) friends, (2) food, (3) the market swap, and (4) an activity. Some of the activities were painting tote bags, a flower bar, and charm bars. So, I made a decision to do a quick Amazon splurge and grab the things needed for 10 friends to make fall keychain charms. From the youngest to the oldest of us, we all made a keychain and the fall-themed charms made it really fun to choose the charms for the season.
One extra tip on the charm bar, I asked my daughter to pre-assemble the charms with the lobster clasp so it was very simple for everyone to pick their charms and clip them to the keychain. This kept the process simple for everyone at any skill level.
THE SWAP
After everyone mingled, made their keychain, had some snacks, we each took a turn doing a show-and-tell of our item. Then we all grabbed our baskets, and shopped around the market selecting one of each item. On the invite, I had asked everyone to BYOB: Bring Your Own Basket. As a hostess, this was a huge cost saver, but I’ve seen lots of swap parties where the hostess provides baskets and they are a big part of the swap party decor.
Essentially, everyone arrived with their basket full of 10 of their handmade items. After the swap, they now had a basket full of 10 different, handmade items. Everyone went home with a basket full of goodies to welcome the season.
Here’s a list of what everyone brought.
Mini rosemary focaccia bread
Ghost cake pops
Homemade marshmallows
Pumpkin painted wooden beads
Cinnamon candles
Fall stationary pack
Trending TikTok recipe and herbs to make it
Mexican sunflower seeds
Herb salt
Mini potted plants (basil & mint)
On the sign-up sheet, we had categories to sign up with so we didn’t end up with duplicates. Everyone brought such thoughtful items. Everyone had so much fun shopping at the swap market!
WOULD I HOST THIS PARTY AGAIN?
Without a doubt, yes. In fact, I think I’ll do a spring and a fall swap party. What impressed me the most was each woman thanking me for the invite and sharing that she might have been apprehensive about attending, but that she thoroughly enjoyed it. She enjoyed the process of being creative, the low-key vibe of the party, and the shopping. My favorite line and highest compliment was, “If you host this again, please invite me.”
Girlfriend, you’re on the list for life!
From the Grow. Gather. Glow. Store
GATHER: 12 Reasons to Gather this Season
This little swap party inspired something bigger: GATHER, my 28-page digital host magazine featuring 12 themed reasons to bring your favorite people together. From ready-to-customize invitations to simple hosting ideas, I’ve done some of the planning so you can enjoy more of the fun.
More fun. Less Stress. Bring Dip. www.growgatherglow.com/store
Maybe you’ve been waiting for someone to invite you. Maybe you’ve been thinking about getting a few friends together but keep finding reasons to put it off. Consider this your encouragement to be the one who extends the invitation. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be expensive. And it certainly doesn’t have to be perfect.
Just gather.
Good things are coming…
