Hi! This is Melissa, Jessica’s sister-in-law and I LOVE holidays! I attribute this love for being festive to my mom, who did such a great job celebrating holidays to the fullest–even with 7 kids and a limited income. I learned that being festive does not have to take a lot of money, and that doing even simple things will create lasting memories. In my mom’s honor (she passed away 8 years ago), I have started a blog called So Festive! . It is a place to collect holiday traditions, activities, recipes, decor ideas, or anything else related to making holidays festive. Well, now for what you really want. Even though Christmas is not over yet, it is not too early to start thinking about New Year’s. There are many fun ways to celebrate New Year’s Eve as a family.

Banging pots and pans

We love to grab any and all pots, pans, and spoons from the cupboards to bang at midnight! This may seem a little weird, but it is one of our favorite traditions that we do every year. We run up and down the streets yelling, “Happy New Year” and our neighbors even look forward to this now. 🙂 If you don’t want your nice stuff to get ruined, consider buying some cheap wooden spoons from the dollar store.

No ‘bedtime’

As kids, we looked forward to New Year’s Eve because it was the one night when we could stay up as late as we wanted.

Play games

So if you are going to stay up late, there are some fun things you can do to fill your time. We love playing the new games we got for Christmas or bringing out the old-time favorites. Some great games that we love include:

The Dollar Bill game- To play, pin a dollar bill to everyone’s shirt and decide on something that is not ‘allowed’ such as saying a certain word, scratching your face, playing with hair, etc. Throughout the night, if anyone catches someone doing something that is not allowed, they get the dollar bill and pin it to their shirt. At midnight, whatever money you have on you, you get to keep!

Bang is a fast-moving card game that will keep you busy for hours! It is that fun! For more details, click here.

Have yourself a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!