Fun & Festivities: Hen Party/Bachelorette Games

From Healthstones.com

Been asked to be bridesmaid and worrying about the hen night activities? Don’t panic!

Everyone’s hen night/weekend/extravaganza should be something personal to them. For some that will be a day of shopping, for others a pamper day at the spa, or – for the more rowdy – a night downing Jaeger-bombs dressed head-to-toe in willy regalia. Unless you know the bride-to-be really well I’d suggest consulting with her before you start planning anything. Your ideas and her’s of what constitutes a rip-roaring fun hen celebration may be completely different and it’s important to remember that even if her suggestions aren’t your thing – it’s her party and she’ll do what she wants to. Don’t try to modify her desires to fit in what you want to do unless you want the same to happen to you when the tables are turned!

That said, it’s always good to have a few surprises tucked away. I’m not talking strippers. I don’t think I know of any woman who would actually want a stripper at her hen party. In fact, I explicitly told my friends that if a man turned up who then proceeded to shed clothes I would run away, lock myself in the toilet, and refuse to come out until he had gone. I’m talking cheeky little nice surprises, that lighten the mood, get everyone up for a good time and have a minimal amount of embarrassment. I say minimal because I think some form of embarrassment is mandatory on a hen do.

With that in mind here are some games you could play…

Pin The Willy…

Not as rude as it sounds. Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s there was a character called Ethel in the soap EastEnders. She had a cute little pug dog whom she called Willy and often ‘my little Willy’. I’m sure you can see where this is going?!

Preparation

1. Track down a photo of Ethel with her Little Willy. I particularly like this one and print out two copies.

2. Mount one onto card, on the other carefully cut out the dog and discard the remainder of the picture.

Let the fun commence

1. When you come to play the game. Announce to the bride that you’re going to play ‘Pin the Willy’ and watch her squirm. Blindfold her and, having placed a small amount of Blu Tak on the back of the cut out of the dog, pass this to her and ask her to pin onto the picture as close to where it should be as possible (obviously on the matching image of the dog, but don’t tell her that just yet – in fact, for maximum impact, she shouldn’t see the images at all!).

2. Remove the blindfold so she can see how close she was and tut at her dirty mind – whatever did she think you were asking to pin where?!

From henpartysuperstore.co.uk

How Well Do you Know the Bride? 

One for your fellow hens. You’ll need to know the Bride pretty well yourself for this one. It’s a good giggle, which lets the bride take a breather from the games for a while and can be a great ice breaker.

Preparation

Write down a list of around ten questions about the bride. You want to get a good mix of easy questions (what is her favourite alcoholic tipple?), ones about the wedding (where did the bride and groom go on their first date?) and slightly embarrassing ones (which cartoon character did the bride once have a crush on?)

Let the fun commence

When it’s time to play, you can either give guests a pen and piece of paper to write their answers on and read out later, or get people to shout their answers out. Either way it should make for an amusing insight into what they think of the bride, or collapse into utter nonsense. You could award a prize to the person who gets the most answers correct.

Guess the Willy

Some brides stipulate a ‘no willy’ rule for their last night of freedom. But come on a hen do isn’t a hen do without some willies, right? This is a cheeky way of incorporating some classy willy!

Preparation

Source images of famous Williams from the web and print them out. Think Will I Am, Will Smith, Just William, Prince William, William Shakespeare, William Tell.

Let the fun commence

When it comes to playing, announce that you’re going to play ‘Guess the Willy’ and watch the bride temporarily squirm. Then announce that she has a selection of famous willies which she has to identify. Hold up the individual images and see if she can guess each one (if she can’t get the rest of the hens in on the guessing game).

The Mr & Mrs Game Without the Mrs (a.k.a How Well Does the Bride Know the Groom)

A classic, but a goody – so long as you know the couple are pretty tight to begin with.

Preparation

Write a list of questions to pose to the groom – these could be things like ‘What’s your favourite flavour of crisps?’, ‘What was your first car?’ and get the groom to answer them (I sent them via Facebook and played the game off my phone).

Let the fun commence

At the hen do, ask the bride-to-be the questions about her husband and see how many she gets right.

Have you played any amusing hen party games?

Fun: Our Wedding Scrapbook and Memory Box

Along with the discarded craft materials and the wedding dress slung over the back of an office chair, the room where things go to die also housed a whole heap of memories. I don’t mean that we’d thrown parties in there, or even had deep discussions. Nope, our spare room housed something far messier than that…

…A whole two shelves of our bookcase were home to various wedding paraphernalia – cards, RSVPs, images torn from magazines with ideas for everything from bridesmaid dresses to cakes, T-shirts from my hen do, honeymoon photos, our cake topper…

The mess wasn’t pretty; the items were! And, so, in my latest project I’ve set to creating some more suitable storage for these wedding wonders. Say hello to my wedding scrapbook, and my wedding memory box.

I’d purchased both some time ago from John Lewis (back when I was a Miss in fact) and they’d lain unloved.

Now they’re filled with, well, love and happy memories.

There’s no real ‘how to’ lesson here. All I did was stick the memories into the scrapbook in an appropriate order with some PVA glue. Anything that was too bulky made its (strategically placed) way into the memory box.

And now I have something more manageable to store. Something which every time I look through it will make me smile. And something to show the kids/grankids/aliens from Mars when they eventually land.

What have you done with your wedding memories?

Festivities: Storing Your Wedding Dress

My original plan was to sell my wedding dress after the ‘big day’. I had this romantic notion that someone high on love, but short on cash would be grateful for being able to wear such a beauty on the day they say ‘I do’.

I didn’t want to make a knee-jerk decision though. What if I regretted it later? And so, for the last couple of years, my wedding dress has lived in our spare room (a.k.a the room where projects go to die) slung over the back of an office chair.

I took it out from its, now decaying, carrier a while ago and decided to pop the dress on to see if I could bear to part with it. Granted it didn’t look so good without the hair, make-up and heels – but even so – it still made me feel like a princess. It didn’t make sense to keep it, but, when it comes to love, things rarely do make sense.

My Sister-in-Law stored hers (straight after the wedding – she is soooo much more organised than me!) in a beautiful box filled with acid free tissue paper and so I set to Google to find something similar.

The Empty Box Company, as the name would suggest, specialise in creating, erm, empty boxes. So what?! My day job is in an industrial setting, cardboard boxes are ten-a-penny on our production line and in our warehouse. What The Empty Box Company specialise in is beautiful boxes. Boxes that make you swoon. Boxes that make your heart flutter. And, most importantly of all, boxes that protect your precious wedding dress from light, dust and dirt as well as preventing it from getting crushed or marked and helping to stop it yellowing (they also make gorgeous boxes for Christening gowns and other storage solutions). Apparently the boxes have been known to prevent from fire and flood damage – hopefully we will never have to put that to the test! The box is manufactured from pH neutral board to help avoid the dress from yellowing and to keep it fresh and clean.

They’re not cheap and I did think I was crazy paying out almost £80 on an empty box, albeit a beautiful one. The boxes are available in varying sizes and although I could have probably fitted my dress into the medium sized box I also wanted to house my veil and other accessories in there, so opted for the extra large option just to be sure. I have to say it’s massive! You can even choose the design of your box and opt to have calligraphy included (at an extra cost).

One of my concerns was that the box would arrive battered and beaten. Not so. It arrived in sturdy cardboard box, stuffed with more cardboard for protection and, my beautiful wedding dress box, was, cleverly, enclosed in a plastic bag with two large knots at the top to make lifting it out of the packaging even easier (I do love it when companies think of little details like that).

Sure, it’s a box, but it’s also a thing of beauty. It’s sturdy. It’s pink (I opted for the Parisienne pink design). It’s got a massive beautiful bow on it and handy details like sturdy rope handles to make accessing the box easier. When I opened it I literally swooned at the lace lining at the top.

 

Fortunately the beautiful box comes with instructions on how to get your wedding dress packed up and into it. Basically layer of acid free tissue paper (included with the box), add dress, fold dress, another layer of acid free tissue paper, keep going… You need to try to avoid the dress touching itself (hence the layers of tissue paper between) I don’t think there’s an exact science (some wedding dress shops will do this for you) but I managed to get the dress into the box using this technique with a bit of help from the back of our sofa (alternatively you could get your husband or a bridesmaid to give you a hand). Don’t forget to stuff some scrunched up acid free tissue paper into the bodice of the dress to help to retain its shape.

When I reached the top layer I swooned again. Look how pretty it looks!

Then I piled in the accessories, taking a moment to try on the veil again (has to be done) and, again, ensuring they didn’t touch the dress, or each other, by wrapping in lots of acid free tissue paper.

For the time being the beautiful box is residing in our spare room, until we get new wardrobes sorted. The boxes are intended to be placed on top of a wardrobe or under a bed – away from damp, heat and sunlight. Storing in a loft is not recommended.

So, yes, an expensive beautiful box. Not what I’d originally intended for my wedding dress, but right now, I couldn’t be happier.

What have you done with your wedding dress?

On a side note, I do find it funny that wedding dresses are so expensive, yet they come on such cheap hangers… Why is that?!

 

Fun: Painted Picture Frames

The crap in my spare room,

it was getting me down (my friend).

Like some crafts in a bag,

looking so sad

The time has come around…

Excuse my poor paraphrasing of The Verve, but to be honest, I couldn’t resist.

As you may know I’ve been sorting out our spare room a.k.a (adopts scary booming voice) ‘the room where projects go to die’ and in doing so I’ve stumbled across a helluva lot of unloved craft materials. Projects that seemed a good idea when I saw them on Pinterest. I’d even gone so far as sourcing the materials in Hobbycraft. Yep, I was all up for the retail therapy side of crafting, just not so prepared for the doing bit. But, wanting to clear my spare room of junk, and liberate my brain by not having a whole heap of half-finished projects weighing me down, I set to crafting, sticking, sewing and creating. Here I share with you the first of my endeavours…

Greetings Cards as Decorations

Every once in a while you receive a card that stands out from the rest, for whatever reason. Maybe its got a nice vintage design, or it’s been sent to you by someone special. Whatever it is, there’s something about it, you just can’t stop looking at it and when it comes to card recycling time you just can’t bear to chuck it. I had a couple of cards of this ilk. One a gorgeous vintage design, the other super cute. I’d slung them in my Christmas box, not really knowing what to do with them. Each year they would be taken out of the Christmas box, but unlike it’s housemates – the other Christmas decorations – they would never make it on display. What was the point in keeping them if they just sat in a box? And so I decided, if I liked the cards that much, I should make decorations out of them!

What you need

Greetings cards
Photo frames
Sandpaper
Paint
Paintbrush

Method

1. Firstly, source photo frames that are the right size and design for your cards. If the frames are also the right colour – bonus – you’ve just saved yourself a job! Otherwise look for frames that have an uncoated wood finish, or are a light colour as it makes them easier to paint. I got mine from Wilko, but you might be able to get some from charity shops too.

2. Make sure your cards fit perfectly – you might have to do some trimming. Once you’re happy, put your cards somewhere safe and out of the way of the prep and painting.

3. Remove the glass from the frame and start preparing the frame by rubbing it all over with sandpaper. Wipe down with a damp cloth, followed by a dry cloth.

4. Now you’re ready to paint! I had some gold paint left over from another craft project which seemed the perfect shade for displaying Christmas cards, but you could use whatever shade you want. Leftover wall paint would work fine, or buy small pots from a DIY or craft store. Paint a coat at a time, leaving each coat to dry overnight (make sure you cover all surfaces and clothes to prevent getting paint where you don’t want it, obvs!).

5. When you’re happy with the finish (I went for three coats of paint on the wood frame and four coats on the white frame) and the frames are dry, put the glass back in, add your cards, snap the back on et voila decorations crafted from those cards you just can’t bear to throw away.

Festivities: My Birthday Wishlist 2014

Woo hoo! It’s March – my birthday month. Here’s what I hope the birthday fairies bring me this year…

Orla Kiely Stem print Pure Evoke DAB radio, £149.95, John Lewis

Adoption of Baby Gelison, £28.50. Orangutan Appeal UK

Jo Malone, Peony and Blush Suede Cologne 30ml, £39, Jo Malone

Soap & Glory Clean on Me shower gel, £6, Boots

Festivities: Big Love This Valentines Day and Every Day

http://instagram.com/p/kaCzUUMAvQ/

People seem to fall into two camps when it comes to Valentines Day. Camp one comprises those who think it’s commercial clap trash dreamt up by the card giants to flog more sickly sweet sentiments and fluffy bears. Camp two are more your ‘go hard or go home’ brigade (so to speak) – going all out, with flowers, chocolates, public declarations of love on Facebook, meals out etc… etc…

Hubby and I have never been into Valentines Day. Perhaps it was because our first date was just a few weeks before Valentines Day and we didn’t want to freak the other out by making soppy declarations ahead of time. And then, after that first year of uncertainly, we, of course, celebrated our first date anniversary by going out for a meal (or more often than not, indulging in take out) just a few weeks before V day making going out for two meals in such a short space of time seem somewhat frivolous (especially when we were desperately saving for our first home and our wedding).

These days the first date anniversary has been superseded by our wedding anniversary but we’re still not any more excited by Valentines Day. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we’re Valentine’s Scrooges, after all we still do cards and most years we play the ‘we’re not buying gifts this year’ Tango, which results in Hubby surprising me with a bunch of beautiful but modest roses and me buying a small token gift for him too. We might even indulge in some take out and a bit of a cuddle. Steady Tiger!

The thought of sitting in a restaurant filled with other loved-up couples on a specified day does kinda fill me with the heebygeebees. It’s all a bit conformist, a bit Stepford Wives. A bit… for today is Valentine’s Day  so we shalst love and eat set menu food for that is what is expected of us. I’d rather go out for a yummy meal when there’s not the desperate scent of ‘is he going to propose’ emanating from the table next to you. There’s also the fact that I love my Hubby all the live long day and night and do my utmost to make sure he knows this – not just by telling him, but also by supporting him, listening to him, giving him some space when he needs it…

Then there’s the money saving advantage of having a low-key Valentines Day and before you call me stingy. I mean more the fact that you can save money on buying Valentine’s Day tack and reassign those funds to something you really want… like a holiday to Sri Lanka.

How do you celebrate Valentines Day?

Festivities: Our Nine Year Anniversary!

As I write this I can’t help but think back to this time nine years ago. This time nine years ago I was getting glammed-up; straightening my hair, spritzing on Dior Addict and applying some ultra-sticky lipgloss. The formulation of lipgloss isn’t the only thing to have changed in that time!

You see, today marks the nine year anniversary of mine and Love of my Life’s first date. Who knew that drinks in All Bar One, followed by watching Oceans Twelve at the cinema (I knew he was a keeper when he was OK with my watching a film with Brad Pitt AND George Clooney in on a first date!) would lead to multiple cups of coffee and biscuits and then, several years later, marriage?

Who knew indeed. But I’m blooming glad it worked out that way!

Since getting hitched we celebrate our wedding anniversary rather than our first date anniversary, but we always make sure we treat ourselves to a take out and a good reminisce every 5th February!

What were you doing nine years ago?

Festivities: My New Year’s Resolutions

Gung hay fat choy! Happy Chinese New Year of the horse.

So, being as I haven’t discussed new year’s resolutions with you yet, I thought I’d take the Chinese New Year as my prompt to get everything out in the open.

First up, I don’t make resolutions in the true sense of the word (e.g. ‘run 5k in under 35 minutes by May’). What I tend to do it pretend it’s 31st December 2014 and write an account looking back on the year. This shows me what I want from the year and, in the interest in keeping things fun and fluid, I write some rough aims based around this. You’ll see here that I did this last year too.

So, what are this years aims? Here’s a snapshot…

1. Have family over for New Year’s Eve – this is one of those social occasions that I really enjoy organising and I’d like to think everyone has enjoyed previous years, so this is a reminder to continue the tradition.

2. Have an amazing holiday to Sri Lanka and an ace short break in Edinburgh – well, they’re booked, we just gotta hope they’re amazing!

3. Do a financial audit and really get in control of my finances, with a proper savings plan and, erm, more savings. I swing between being OK with money and being awful. I want to be able to say I’m good with money.

4. Daily vlogging – well that didn’t work out really did it? Oops!

5. See and speak to my family and friends more often.

6. Finish decorating – we’ve only got the woodwork in the hallway to do and the spare room. We can do this!

7. Do more writing and actually get paid for it.

8. Exercise at least three times per week.

9. See Robbie in concert and at Socceraid – the tickets are booked, so this one is looking good!

10. Pamper myself at least once per week.

11. Download the Beyonce visual album – oh I can tick that one off already :).

12. Enjoy more dates with hubby – trips to the cinema, meals out, country walks, that type of thing.

13. Complete my Shorthand book. I started learning at Uni, gave up and have been half-heartedly trying to learn ever since. I want to crack it this year.

What are your new year resolutions?

Find out how I celebrated Chinese New Year last year here.

Film: What I Got For Christmas 2013

Whether you just want to be nosey, or you’re looking for gift inspiration, I thought I’d share with you the lovely gifts that I received for Christmas 2013. Big thanks to all my real world friends and family for knowing me so well and buying such thoughtful gifts.

What did you get for Christmas?

Festivities: Games for New Years Eve

Here are two fun and easy to organise games which I created for our celebrations last New Years Eve.

Word Bingo

Each player is given a card with five words on, these could be clichés associated with New Years Eve (e.g. Chinese lanterns, fireworks, midnight), or phrases which are commonly used within your social circle.

The game is played over the course of the evening. When a player hears one of the words on their card mentioned in conversation they mark it off. The first person to have marked off all words on their card is the winner and should be awarded with a small spot prize (think something along the lines of a bag of sweets or a novelty gift from the poundshop).

Players cannot mark off words which they say themselves and cannot make other players say other words (e.g. “Say turkey”), but sneakily engineering conversations so the words on their cards come up in conversation is allowed.

Guess the celeb

Players have to guess the celebrity faces within a montage created by the host. All the celebrities featured in the montage should have been featured in the news, or have done something of significance over the year. The one who gets the most celebrities wins a small spot prize.

Creating the photo montage is easy. All you need is some photos of celebrities (use Google images or newspapers and magazines) some scissors and some glue.

What games will you be playing this New Years Eve?