It's no surprise that Christmas is my favorite time of year. What's not to love? So you can imagine my excitement when we were asked to style a Holiday themed blogger event for Chex Party Mix. The event was held at Haven's Kitchen, an insanely awesome cooking school, cafe and event space on West 17th Street. The third floor has light for days and was the perfect blank canvas for what we had in store. Seeing as this would be a collection mom-bloggers, we thought a very subtle "Chex and the City" theme would be fitting. The guests entered and were greeted with a gorgeous breakfast spread, thanks to Havens. After grabbing a quick bite, they headed over to the 'Test and Try' kitchen where we had set up custom I HEART CHEX aprons, measuring cups, spoons, bowls and most importantly microwaves - Chex Party Mix is so easy, every single recipe can be made in the microwave.

Behind the setup, we filled rectangular clear glass vases in varying heights with Chex mix to create a NYC skyline. The bloggers had a blast making and tasting the delicious recipes. It was important for everyone to see just how easy Chex Party Mix is to make. And just how addicting the recipes are!

As a fun take-home, we had custom wooden spoons made with each blogger's logo. Are these not gorgeous? After learning how to perfect CPM, guests headed over to a table we styled where we gave them tips on some fun and super easy ways to style your table for the Holidays.

To tie in the Chex and the City theme, we styled Chex Party Mix in mini martini glasses, used toy taxi cabs as food place card holders and filled in our flower assortment with some pink carnations, as a nod to Berger and Carrie!

For an easy favor for guests, fill mason jars with the dry ingredients needed to make one Chex Party Mix Recipe. Display in a clear tray filled with bright red cranberries and affix a personalized sticker on top.

It's the holidays so sparkle and glitter is our go-to, as you can see from the gold glitter vases which I gave a brief how-to on. A shelving  unit is the perfect place to tie in Holiday Decor. Letter mugs from Anthropolgie were used to spell out Fa-La-La and we filled them with candy canes. We also love anything woodsy like pine cones and birch slabs. Top it off with homemade Chex + cranberry garland, a few ornaments and some hand-knit stockings and this room is ready for Christmas!

How cool are these vintage marquee lights we found? When we saw them, we knew we had to use them! We surrounded the letters with tons of lush evergreen, shiny gold and red Christmas ornaments and silver mercury glass Christmas trees. Above the setup we strung tons of paper garlands in different colors and textures. We absolutely loved the way it turned out! Lastly, guests were escorted over to a table setup where they received as food photography lesson from Karilyn Sanders. As they made their way over, homemade hot chocolate sprinkled with crushed chex was passed out to everyone. What a treat! Everyone absolutely loved the photography tips. It's really amazing how knowing a few tricks can improve your picture taking skills ten-fold. And since we all use our iPhones to take 99% of our pictures, this is exactly how Karilyn taught them. Genius! Such a fun event to be a part of! Thanks to everyone at General Mills and Current for including us, we had a blast styling and snacking with you!

Photography : Karilyn Sanders