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Home » Holidays & Seasonal » New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve At Home

Modified: Jan 6, 2025 · Published: Dec 17, 2020 by Dannyelle Nicolle-Ramjist · This post may contain affiliate links · Leave a Comment

New Year's Eve At Home: have an appetizer party on New Years with family, friends, kids, or adults. Everyone cooks and scores each other.

Jump to:
  • A Little Friendly Competition
  • New Year's Eve Decor
  • Choosing The Appetizers
  • Scoring The Appetizers
  • More Ideas
  • More Recipe Ideas

It's almost New Year's Eve and this year we're celebrating at home.  In fact we've had a version of this party for the last couple of years and it's especially perfect for this year.  We are celebrating with a New Year's Eve appetizer competition! 

What's better than enjoying all our favourite appetizers on New Year's Eve?  And we're not talking about frozen ones from the supermarket either... we've taken it up a notch and turned it into a fun family competition!

A Little Friendly Competition

Our kids are teenagers and like cooking so they've enjoyed joining the fun, but if you had younger kids who needed more help you could point them towards a no-cook option, or form teams with an adult.  Last year my sister and brother-in-law joined us and took the competition up a notch!

New Year's Eve Decor

I set up the kitchen table for our tasting and scoring.  I created this easy and beautiful New Year's Eve centre piece with lots of mirrored disco balls.  These have been collected over the years, but they were mostly from the dollar store.  I layered the disco balls on a simple runner and added in some gold mercy glass tea light holders for a little more sparkle.

New Year's Eve at home party
New Year's Eve decor

I designed a beautiful printable set for this party that you can obtain for instant download by subscribing to the blog below.  It includes a fun "Happy New Year" banner with the year as well. Subscribe below, then check your inbox for the password to the Free Resource Library - if you don't see it check your spam folder.

New Year's Eve Printables

I picked up some balloons for a fun touch too.  I also did a collection of clocks.  I picked up some at thrift stores, and the alarm clocks are mostly from antique stores.  

New Year's Eve decor

The printable set also includes some straw flags you can add to your paper straws for a festive touch.

New Year's Eve decor

It won't be New Year's Eve without some bubbly!

New Year's Eve at home

The set includes printable labels for all your appetizers, score cards, and fun picks you can use for any of the food to dress it up.

New Year's Eve party ideas

Choosing The Appetizers

We encouraged everyone to think of their very favourite restaurant appetizer -or for us who love cruising we were channeling our favourite cruise formal dining room appetizers.  We all did our own research, and found recipes.  Some of our crew went with tried and true favourites, and some brave ones tried new recipes.  Our guests brought their ingredients with them.  Around 5 or so we all got in the kitchen together, put some tunes on, poured some fancy drinks and got cooking together.

New Year's Eve appetizer party

Everyone set up their appetizer on the table and used one of our appetizer place cards from the printable set to label their dish.  Each place card had a number on it so it was easy to keep track of scoring.

New Year's Eve appetizer
New Year's Eve at home party

When it was time to taste test everyone helped themselves, scoring as they went.

New Year's Eve at home party
what to do at home for New Year's Eve

For our appetizers we choose this portabella mushroom and feta pizza -find the recipe here.  

New Year's Eve at home party

We also made stuffed mushrooms -find the recipe here.

New Year's Eve at home party

Another dish we made was caramelized onion and goat's cheese tarts.  Find our recipe here.

New Year's Eve appetizer

We also made homemade honey garlic chicken wings, find the recipe here.

New Year's Eve at home party
New Year's Eve appetizer party

Scoring The Appetizers

When it was time for scoring and dinner, we used these printable score cards to give everyone's appetizer a score out of 5.  Afterward we tallied up the scores for a winner.  

You might want to include a prize for the winner.  Something like a gift card, or a bottle of  something special would be fun.  We went for bragging rights.

appetizer competition

More Ideas

Depending on the number of people at your party, you might want to supplement the meal.  Last year we had 6 main appetizers and that was perfect for a fun dinner.  If you had less, you might want to also add in a charcuterie and cheese board for additional nibbling, or to enjoy while you're cooking together. 

how to host an appetizer competition

You could also do a dessert round at midnight for a fun addition, where everyone makes a small version of their favourite sweet as well, and you all taste and score this course as well.  You could even ask everyone to add a drink pairing to all the appetizers, alcoholic or non-alcoholic.  And depending on your group, you could dress up in fancy attire, or have a pj party.  It's such a fun party idea that you can adjust depending on the group of family, friends, kids or adults.  

During our evening between cooking and nibbling we also had a movie marathon going on.  Pick a series, a theme, or a favourite actor and watch them all that night. One year we did Jane Austen movies, last year it was the God Father, we also had Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and Narnia in the running.  A game board tournament might be a fun option as well.

With a fun New Year's Eve at home like this one, life really is a party!

Purchase the New Year's Eve Printable Party Set here for instant download and print on your home printer or office store and enjoy.

More Recipe Ideas

Want more appetizer recipe ideas?

Check out our Individual Charcuterie Snack Boards here.

Individual Charcuterie Boards: perfect for entertaining or for date night, full of ideas for cheeses, meats, fruits, sweets and more.

You might also like our Homemade Cheese Straws here.

Cheese Straws Recipe: spicy and savoury cheese shortbread straws, perfect for gift giving or as part of a charcuterie board.

Also check out our Slow Cocker Spinach and Artichoke Dip here.

Slow Cooker Spinach and Artichoke Dip: Perfect for easy entertaining, just add everything to the slow cooker and forget about it!

You might also like our Cranberry Raspberry Cocktail here.

Cranberry Raspberry Cocktail: made with cranberry raspberry juice, ginger ale and vodka, add easy sugared cranberries as the perfect garnish.

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