With the rising cost of a night out and not many options for parents and kids to celebrate New Year’s together, celebrating New Year’s Eve at home is becoming the thing to do for more and more families across Canada.
With four kids in my house, we’ve done New Year’s at home more times than I can count, and just like our Christmas traditions, we have New Year’s traditions we like to do every year to make the night memorable. Here are a few ways you can celebrate New Year’s Eve at home.
Make a great meal 
If you’ve made a huge turkey dinner for Christmas, New Year’s Eve is the night to make a meal out of appies. Check out a few of the great appies recipes I posted and add a few of your own, then get the kids involved helping you make them. You could also create a meal out of a main dish you don’t normally serve like seafood, fish, or a theme meal like Greek and Italian, or make a self-serve buffet of tacos and desserts like ice cream sundaes.
It’s the little touches that make New Year’s Eve at home special, so make sure you go all out with your good dishes or china, stemware, and add some sparkle with New Year’s Eve hats and party blowers. If you want to do something different and it’s cold outside, have a picnic on the floor in front of the fire. We’ve actually roasted marshmallows in front of a friend’s open fireplace on New Year’s Eve and it was a highlight for everyone.
Games anyone?
Board games are something almost everyone gets for Christmas, and this year we added classics like Scrabble and Risk to our games closet. New Year’s Eve is the perfect time to break out a board game or two and play a few rounds with the kids.
You can keep the games going by turning on your game console and playing multiplayer with friends or family. We’ve put Facetime on our iPads and held Super Mario tournaments on our Wii U with family members in another province, and that’s a great way to have fun and feel like you’re with a large group of people even when you’re not.
Kick back and watch a movie
Movies are great gifts for Christmas, and New Year’s Eve is a great time to bust open a few movies and have a marathon. You can set up your living room like a movie theatre by setting up a popcorn machine, have a corner set up for drinks, and have a snack bar complete with candy and other small snacks.
Break out the pots and pans
I didn’t realize this was a tradition out of New Zealand, but every New Year’s Eve we’ve sent the older kids out into the streets at midnight with a set of pots and pans so they can ‘bang in’ the New Years. In some cultures, the noise is supposed to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck, but we just do it because kids think it’s fun to make noise.
A New Year’s Eve at home doesn’t have to mean a quiet night in. If you follow these suggestions for a great New Year’s Eve and start your own New Year’s traditions, you’ll want to have a night at home every New Year’s Eve.
If you need some New Year’s Eve gear to set yourself up for a great night in, check out Bestbuy.ca’s selection of board games, game consoles, and movies.
