Bachelorette Bingo Cards

I'm getting into the swing of my new stay-at-home life (I'm still not home very often though, strange) and recently I've actually done a few creative things again! As wedding season kicks off, so too does Bachelorette Party season, and my Etsy shop has been cranking out " DIRTY" Bingo games for Bachelorette parties all across the country! I first made these for my little sister's party and they were a big hit. I've had a lot of fun updating my designs and making a few changes, here are a couple of the sets I recently shipped out - first my original pink/black theme with gold necklaces:

And just last night I made this purple set with silver ribbon and silver star stickers to mark off the completed tasks, I LOVE how they turned out! I decided to go ahead and make another set right away that is ready to ship!

It's been really fun to do a little project each night lately, and with the help of SuperWhy and Sesame Street, it's worked out better than I thought and I'm beating my deadlines for shipping. I will be on hiatus for a while in mid-end of July though, so if you want to order, get it in ASAP!



Welcome to the Flock Bridal Shower - Kiss the Groom Game

As I mentioned yesterday, I put together two games for the "Welcome to the Flock" bridal shower I threw for my sister-in-law-to-be. The first one was called "Kiss the Groom":



A few weeks before the shower I borrowed the disc of engagement photos the happy couple had taken and picked out a nice close up. I uploaded them to costco.com's photo site and printed the largest size - 20" x 30" - that they offer - for just $8.99! The game is played like "pin the tail on the donkey", but instead of tails you use kisses - which I got in the form of stickers at Michael's (really cheap too! I think it was $2 for 3 pkgs!).

We hung the poster up on one of the large windows in the party rom and covered the surrounding area with saran wrap to protect the windows in case someone was REALLY off on their sticker placement - I didn't want to spend the afternoon chipping adhesive off the windows. If you want to re-use the poster, I suggest you cover that with wrap as well - the industrial kind will stick to the window on its own, you don't even really need tape.

I used a thin sharpie to write names on each kiss sticker, and guests spun around 3 times and then tried to stick their kiss on the groom's lips. I brought a mask, but it was just easier to have people close their eyes since we had over 30 to get through :) No cheaters as far as I know!


The winner, very pleased with her performance :)

It was really fun to watch everyone play, so it was a fun social game for a shower and the photos give it a very personal touch. I gave prizes both for the closest kiss and booby prizes for the farthest away (cute little travel sized sanitizer gel from Bath & Body Works in all sorts of fun scents). This is a really easy, cost effective, and fitting shower game I'd definitely recommend.

State Fair Bridal Shower - FAIR Bingo!

I'm feeling a little full after all of the recent food posts, so before I get to the main food table I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the bingo game I created for the party. Since we were having a lot of people and didn't want to take up all of the time (and because I couldn't think of a 5 letter word with the categories I wanted) I scaled the board down to 4 X 4 instead of 5 x 5. Each letter in the word F-A-I-R stood for a category, Food, Agriculture, Interests, and Rides.



I created a bingo template on PowerPoint and printed boards with empty squares. Then I scoured Google images for all of my pictures. To ensure all of the boards were different I decided on 16 different choices for each category, which was easy for some (food) but harder for others (rides). Case in point, there was a SkyRide, Sky Glider, and Sky Wheel, all of which look totally different but could be confusing because of the names. I alternated between photos and cartoons and just basically chose images I liked. For the "interest" category I included all of the different things to see and do at the fair that weren't food, rides, or agriculture - everything from Butterheads to the Butterfly House, from FairDo Hair styles to Creative Activities contests, concerts, politics, you name it.



I printed out a bunch of each photo on white cardstock, cut into squares, and then used a glue stick to randomly paste pictures into the squares on my empty bingo cards. It went pretty quickly even though I made over 40 bingo cards.



Each guest received a sheet of colored dot stickers to use as markers, and the caller drew cards from a basket. It was a hit! Guests had fun reliving their fair memories while looking at all of the photos and discussing their favorite fair fun, and winners got a cute little prize from GrammyCupcake:



Canning jars full of candies or nuts and dressed in little gingham frocks. It was very country chic to choose from the giant basket of options:



If I ever learn how to post PDF documents I might come back and add my templates here - but sadly I haven't acquired those skills yet :( In the meantime, I might be willing to share if you email me at Heather@HeathersCreativeLife.com and promise to share a photo of your party! I'd love to hear/see if anyone is using any of these tips for their own State Fair themed event.

Stay tuned for a few more projects and click on the "StateFair" label to see all posts about this bridal shower.

Shot Luge

The idea of a shot luge was first introduced to me by the August Bride, who in her planning came across a video of a family (including grandma) doing shots off an ice luge AT A WEDDING.

While it seemed terribly strange and inappropriate at a formal event, the temptation to try it was just to strong, so I ordered a shot luge from Ice Occasions for our Hollywood Halloween party last year.

I could not have expected the beautiful sculpture they delivered to my door! A shot luge is a slide carved from ice, you pour a shot into a groove at the top and it travels down the slide, chilling, to where you catch it at the end either in a glass (if you are being civilized or worried about germs) or in your mouth (going "frat party style" - which of course, is what we did!). Far from just the basic incline, I got a full out ice sculpture with a color-changing LED light in the base. It also came with a drain tray and hose, which emptied into a bucket behind the table.

THIS WAS A BLAST!

I think every person took at least one turn on the luge (and it was kinda hard - portion control was not easy, and you sometimes got a wave of schnapps in the face. But it was entertaining both to watch and participate). We set up a full bar of options for shooters (the cream in the photo above was NOT for luging, that was brought by a guest dressed as "the Dude" from Big Lebowski who brought his own White Russian Supplies :) It's hard to find "activities" for more adult parties, this was definitely an ice breaker.

Ba-dum-bum!

Bachelorette Bingo

For my sister's bachelorette party the hostess asked me for any entertainment ideas I had, and I volunteered to come up with a game for the evening. I personally cannot stomach the "suck for a buck" type of games where the bachelorette encourages strangers to make sexual advances in return for money, or the variations of this "game" - and I KNOW she'd be pretty uncomfortable with them as well, but I also didn't want something completely vanilla and boring.

So I came up with Bachelorette Bingo, where everyone gets to participate (if they want to - nobody is forced) rather than just the bride, and everyone gets to choose their own level of participation rather than being "dared" or surprised with uncomfortable requests.

The idea was rather simple...but putting the cards together was surprisingly difficult! I kept finding sites that were SELLING lists of bachelorette dares, but few that had them for free, and of those, there were even fewer that I would ever consider doing (Sorry, as a married woman I just would never feel comfortable asking a guy for his man panties, money, or any physical contact. Who does this stuff?!?!?)

I went round and round looking for an acronym, and finally came up with "DIRTY!", that fit my theme and the categories worked out. Each column was a theme:

D= Drink, a list of alcoholic beverages and shots with graphic sexual names - no, I didn't invent these drinks, so don't blame me for the names (MOM!). You can find them on many Internet sites and in a lot of newer bartending books, I picked them up here.

I= Info, sort of like the "truth" category in Truth or Dare, where you share things about your own life & experiences.

R= Risque, as luck had it this was the shortest column (I put in the traditional free space), and that was great because it was the hardest for me to come up with ideas for. My problem is that I myself am not very risque, but didn't want to come across as completely boring, so some of these are even out of my comfort zone, but guess what? That's okay! You don't have to do any of them, and you can still win the game without doing anything from that category. I refused to put on anything illegal or dangerous or explicitly sexually harassing (you wouldn't believe how many of the pre-packaged games think its a good idea to dare people to grab/brush/fondle or otherwise inappropriately violate strangers! If these were males on females, I doubt it would be laughed off in the same way).

T= Talent, and I tried to mix these up. Singing, dancing, telling jokes, etc. I avoided acrobatics and anything that would piss off the waiters and waitresses too much (having been one for so long, I empathize when some idiot thinks its funny to dance on the bar).

Y= YF2B, do you get it? I had to resort to txtspeak, or license plate language for you older readers. Did you sound it out? WIFE - TO - BE! This category is all about celebrating the bride.

I made my bingo cards in powerpoint and sized them to fit 4" X 3" plastic badge holders, like the kind used at conventions. I picked up a couple packs of 10 @ Staples for around $4, and attached gold mardi gras beads I had on hand to be the neck straps. I did this with a few inches of gold foil ribbon, tied in a knot and then curled. This way people could keep them on and play throughout the night hands free, wouldn't lose them from bar to bar, and they were slightly waterproofed in the holders. I got small star stickers to mark the completed tasks - the bride was in charge of verifying all bingos. I also created a recipe card of all the dirty drink recipes so that confused bartenders had a resource if they hadn't heard of one before, and I tucked that in each pouch behind the bingo card. The final product was the picture at the top of this post.

I wasn't scientific in my randomizing of the tasks within the squares, but I did make sure each card was a little different. Here is one page of them (there were 3 pages for a total of 18 different cards, each page had slightly different tasks and within each page the tasks were in different squares).


The prizes for a bingo were the chocolate & peanut butter penis pops from my earlier post, and quite a few people went for them right away - it ended up being a fun ice breaker. We were also lucky to have a gorgeous night and patio seating, so good times all around.

***UPDATE: Bachelorette Bingo cards available now in my etsy shop! Click here.
reactivated May 2012

Barbie Brides

These are actually all the artwork of my talented friends and family!

My crack team of bridesmaids came up with a brilliant game for my wedding shower, perfect for a crafty group. They purchased a bunch of fashion dolls (I recommend Dollar Tree for their $1 ladies)and stripped them down. Each guest (or you could do teams) got their own doll, and a huge tray of art supplies was placed in front of them to use. The supplies were all white items - tissue paper, toilet paper, paper towels, coffee filters, cupcake liners, ribbon, etc., along with tape and scissors. Guests had a certain amount of time to design their own bridal gown, and the winner (as judged by the bride) got a prize.

I liked it obviously because it was crafty, but also because nobody had to dress up themselves or otherwise feel uncomfortable, as some bridal shower games can be. It also reminded me of "Project Runway" but on a scale an amateur could easily accomplish :)

I was actually really impressed with what my guests came up with! Some of them are even pretty, and most of them look like actual dresses (save the mermaid tail my mother made). They stayed up on my mantle for a long time.

Easy twists:
-cut out a photo of the bride and cover the doll with the bride's face to "personalize" the game,

-give out prizes for the most original, best use of materials, closest to the bride's actual dress, etc.

-give each person/team a paper bag of different supplies, and they can only use those items on their design