The last thing you want when playing card games is for a player to get bright orange cheese powder all over a deck of cards or accidentally mark the most important card in the game with a fingerprint of chocolate syrup. Choose family game night snacks that are easy to eat one-handed but will leave the playing hand clean and ready to continue with the game. Include kid-friendly ingredients, then get your kids involved in making snacks before the players assemble for a night of fun.

Anything that goes into a dip makes an easy one-handed snack for card night. An obvious and healthy choice is to serve vegetables, such as carrots, celery, cucumber and bell peppers, with a light and creamy ranch dressing. For fruit, serve apple and pear slices with whipped cream cheese dip. Add protein to the menu with chicken fingers and barbecue sauce. For a classic snack, serve tortilla chips with homemade guacamole. Your kids will love helping mash the avocados and mixing in sour cream, salt, pepper, minced onion, garlic and cilantro.

Kids and adults both enjoy tasty miniature sandwiches in shapes like hearts and diamonds to fit with the card night theme. Choose ingredients that will stay in the sandwiches, so they are easy to eat one-handed during the card game. Keep layers of sticky ingredients, like honey or jam, very thin so they don't squeeze out the edges of the sandwich. Some ideas for ingredients include ham, cheese, peanut butter, honey, jam, cream cheese, hummus, ranch dip and cucumbers. Store-bought cookie cutters make shaping the sandwiches easy enough so kids can help.

Make your own snack mix with some family favorites to munch on during card night. Avoid especially buttery snacks or snacks coated with powder. One idea is to combine plain air-popped corn with nuts and small candy-coated chocolates. Or mix pretzel sticks with dried fruit and pieces of cereal. Season savory snack mixes with a dry salad dressing mix. If you have some little helpers, set out options for ingredients and let them each make their own special snack mix to serve.

Make rectangular sugar cookies the same size as playing cards and have your kids decorate them to look like the cards in the games you will be playing. Set out a few cards as models and use decorator's gel to create simple patterns on the cookies. Guests will enjoy eating the cookies, but watch out because they may try to cheat and supplement the cards they were dealt with a few cookies.