Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

Marin, one of the girls from my co-ed bookclub (now mostly "co" as we've lost most of our "eds") and my newest soccer teammate, hosted her annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party on Saturday. This qualifies as a costume party, right? If you didn't already know, I love costume parties. :)

Do you know how hard it is to find ugly Christmas sweaters these days? They really are a hot commodity. They are selling on Ebay for $25+! Even if I was willing to spend a quarter of a hundred on an ugly sweater, I procrastinated too long to utilize my beloved Ebay. I had to hit the thrift stores and dig through dirty hangers instead. Seriously, have you ever noticed how dirty your hands are after moving around a bunch of thrift store hangers? And how really, really dirty they get if you carry around some hanger-ed items for awhile? Ew. And I'm not even one to be disgusted by dirty, germy things. And still....Ew.

Anyway...the answer to how hard is it to find an ugly Christmas sweater is 9. NINE thrift stores before I found anything! I bought this sweater at thrift store #9. Very Christmas-y, quite ugly.
But at the TENTH thrift store I hit the jackpot with this number.
Yep, that's right! I had TWO ugly Christmas sweaters! Let's check out this red one a little closer:
Have you ever seen so much embroidery? The sweater weighs about fifteen pounds! As if that wasn't enough, there are sequins! And little gold balls! And shoulder pads! Wowza!

And how about Pat's sweater?? The dearth of cheap thrift store sweaters and his residual feelings of pride from the victory that was his homemade KISS costume caused Pat to get all artsy-craftsy again. Felt snowman, spray glitter, cotton balls, little bells. Wow. Seriously ugly. Nice job, Pat. His Home-Ec teacher would be so proud. (And by proud, I mean hanging her head in shame.)

It seemed artsy-craftsy was the theme all around. Everyone went all-out for this party. The hosts in their Ugly Christmas...Snuggies?
Emily also couldn't find a sweater, so she finally gave up and bought jammies and modified them with jingle bells, boa fur and two of her favorite Christmas Beanie Babies. Nicole found a puffy-painted sweatshirt and added embroidery and shoulder pads.
The winners of night were Emily, Pat and Marin's BFF Sarah. Sarah took first place. Her sweater had real lights (battery pack in her back pocket) but I think it was the very ugly shoe/sock combo that tipped the scales in her favor. Merry Ugly Christmas to everyone!

Don't be surprised if my ugly Christmas sweater makes it to a few more parties this year! Did I mention how warm it was??