HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays Perfect for All Gatherings

I received free product and a store gift card in exchange for my honest review. All opinions and content are my own.

I had my first experiencing serving HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays to my guests this year at Thanksgiving and I couldn't be happier with the ease at preparing these plentiful trays full of cheese, crackers, hard salami and pepperoni.  As I planned for my all day event with family, all 15 people in attendance, I knew I had to be creative to ease the use of the kitchen and to alleviate some of my time as I'd be busy preparing the meal.  The HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays are perfect as I chose to offer up one earlier in the day just on in the ready to use tray in the living-room as everyone gathered to watch games.  The second tray was served as an evening snack when everyone was ready to just snack. 

The HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays I purchased had Hormel® Hard Salami, Hormel® Genoa Salami, Sargento® Pepper Jack Cheese, Sargento® Havarti Cheese, Round Crackers and Peloponnese Pitted Olives. 

The variety of tastes went well with my guest's tastes.  I had one who liked olives and the little ones ate the Havarti cheese and crackers alone.  All the adults loved the Pepperjack and Havarti cheeses with the salami.  I think given the quantity of items, it was worth the money even if it does cost a little more for convenience.  I ended up purchasing another one to take on a 12 hour road trip due to the convenience, taste and quality minus the olives due to mess. The other nice feature of the trays is that each item is individually packaged so you can decide not to place all of the items out at once.

    
Unfortunately, by the time the rest of my guests arrived, I was too busy preparing dinner to take a picture with them.  I'd say my step-son was a huge fan of the tray! For the price, quality and convenience, I would recommend HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays.  The combined flavors were perfect, the cheeses had rich taste and the salami was different enough to give a subtle change in flavor but increased the pairing with crackers and the cheese.  My husband was probably the biggest fan as he loves cheese, salami and crackers but I'm not a big fan of the mess he makes on the floor!  

It was a great day of good food, fun times and more memories as it was our first co-family holiday at my house.

HORMEL GATHERINGS® Party Trays are also good for any gatherings, traveling, camping or just a lazy night watching movies.

Looking for more ideas or to be inspired?  Don't forget to check out Hormel Facebook, Hormel Pinterest or Hormel YouTube.



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PurpleTrail Online Invitations and eCard Review

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by: PurpleTrail for this review.

Need a great way to create, send and/or print cards and invitations online?  Party planners and novice planners are enjoying the ease of PurpleTrail as the only provider of online, stylish, ad-free invitations and eCards for free.  There are membership options available to customize for each own's needs and preferences starting at only $5. 

My review is a step by step process of creating my first online invitation post a very easy registration process that takes very little time and was not difficult.

1. Just click "Get Started."
2. Options include "Print Invitations & Cards" or "Online Invitations & Cards."
3. I chose "Online Invitations & Cards" and had over 69 pages of choices.  You can click on and see the 69 pages of choices and sort through page by page or enter what you are looking through in the Search box for designs.  If you place your mouse over the "Online Invitations & Cards" text, it will allow you to search that way as well.
4. I chose the  "Christmas" designs via the mouse hovering option and had to choose from an abundance of great designs that made it very hard to choose from! 
5. I was very easily able to choose options such as adding my own photo (or one from PurpleTrail), my text, embellishments and more. 
6. Once I uploaded my photo, I was able to choose the opacity level, other options such as black and white (there are more), crop the photo and add frames.  I won't go through all the steps as the program is easy to follow when creating your cards and invitations.
7. To print, PurpleTrail allows the user to sort by selecting the preferred formats: "Print Format" options by choosing Postcard 6x4, Postcard 4x6, Folded Card 8.5x5.5, Folded Card 5.5x8.5 or all sizes.  For this review, I selected the Postcard, 4x6 option.  The free membership provides two pages of choices.

This is what the final outcome looks like once e-mailed to your guest:

PurpleTrail also offers a nice how to tour here which I found as a must have.  I needed a little more explanation on how to add things and remove them.  The invitation box was what prompted me to take the tour.

Other great features of PurpleTrail:

• Fun and great looking invitations, e-cards and announcements.
• Thousands of designs to choose from or create your own unique design.
• Send invitations through email, SMS, Twitter and Facebook.
• Ad free!
• Chat with your guests in real time, add a map to the event venue, pot-luck feature which helps each guest specify what they are getting for the party.
• Easily manage and track guest responses.
• Easy to use.
• Visit the party ideas section and blog with tons of great ideas for your party.
• The invites are Ad free, so your guests/friends won’t have to see ads along with your invites/e-cards.
• Four different membership types with one being FREE.
  

Overall, I enjoyed PurpleTrail and will continue to utilize it for my online cards and invitations.  I am curious about the other membership levels and might take a peek to experiment on what I like the best.  Free is good though and the quality of choices is excellent.

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by PurpleTrail for this review.