9 Board Games to Check Out

The day after Thanksgiving means lots of things to lots of people. For some people they are trying to recover from the turkey coma or trying to catch up on their NaNoWriMo word count, others get jazzed up about Black Friday Sales Shopping.  Black Friday for me means Game Day.  I am not a shopper. That is why they make the internet.  I am a board gamer. 

About a dozen years back or so it was established that the day after Thanksgiving was Game Day or BFGD.  Friends pop in throughout the day to roll some dice, count some cards or have mini war games with lovingly painted miniatures.  It is probably one of my favorite days of the year.   There are so many games to play and hardly ever enough time to do more than a dozen. 

I am fond of lists, and hinted in a previous post on a Games List. I am a person on my word.  Below are 9 games worth checking out. I like a wide variety of games, and tried to touch upon several game types.   

1.       Dungeon Run

• This is a tile based exploration game that ends in betrayal. You are exploring a dungeon with your trusty friends, and whoever finds the treasure first is corrupted. Your trusty team needs to kill the traitor before they can exit the dungeon and destroy the world.  
• Every time I say Dungeon Run, all I can think of is Finn and Jake.  This isn’t related to that but just a weird tangent and lots of fun to sing Finn’s dungeon crawl song. 

2.       Exploding Kittens

• This is a card game of chance and strategy. There are two versions of the game. A family friendly one and a definitely not family friendly one.  They are played the same way.  It is kind of like a game of war and go fish all rolled into one, but with kittens.  Nice quick game for those that don’t have a lot of time.  
• If you like the Oatmeal’s humor, I would highly recommend using the non-family friendly deck.  
  

3.       Dixit

• If you like strategy games, then this game might not be for you.  This game is a guessing game, where you have to deduct a person’s card based of their description in among everyone else’s cards that were put down based off that same description.  It is all about speculation.  The art in this game is beautiful and it is a lot of fun to play. 

4.       Smash Up

• This is a strategy card game that is a lot of fun and has several expansion packs to it. You are all trying to conquer different locations that are worth different points. You reach the set point value first through conquering, you win.  Simple, easy, and can quickly ruin friendships.  
• I don’t pay this game that often, because my husband says I have cheat moves.  I don’t. I am just friends with robots and aliens and they do my bidding. 

5.       Roll For It

• This is a dice and strategy game that I am actually good at.  Mostly because you are not expecting me to roll a D6 to try and heal you.  It isn’t going to happen. The dice hate me, which is clearly evident when I played Shadows of Brimstone.  Anyway, this game is about matching dice to cards that have values and when you get to a certain number you will.  Easy, quick fun that is good family fun. 

6.       Shadows of Brimstone

• If you are looking for an epic adventure game that can go on in several hour long sessions with a posse of friends, this game is for you.  There are lots of toggles and jimmies that go with the game and it is a miniature painters dream.   It is a lot of fun, and has strategy, dice, cards and group coordination involved.  
• Don’t leave me in charge of the dice. I won’t heal you, and will probably give you a cursed item or lose a weapon or change your son into a pig. 

7.       Ticket to Ride

• This game is a strategy game where you are a railroad baron trying to get your track down before else gets their track down.  It is an easy to pick up family friendly game that will have you gnashing your teeth as you try to complete your routes. 

8.       Pandemic

• This is a group survival game that I have yet to survive. I have been told it can be done, but have yet to see it. The came combines strategy with chance and is a lot of fun to play. 
• Ken- It’s your fault we get yellow fever every time and die.  I am not holding a grudge, just stating fact. Yellow Fever!!!

9.       Battle of the Electric Vikings

• If you like word games, you will love this game. The purpose of this game is to make heavy metal song titles based off of randomly drawn tiles. It is a little like scrabble, that you have to connect to tiles together, but no spelling is necessary, just your best growly throaty metal voice. 

Grave Robbers from Outer Space is not on the list, because my husband informed me that it is out of print, but they have a Version 3 that is available. I haven’t checked it out, so I don’t know if they changed anything.  Happy Black Friday Game Day!  

Last one Standing

Not all sibling relationships are harmonious. I have gone for years with out uttering a word to my siblings. To some people this would be an ideal relationship, to other people it would be a nightmare. It all depends on the sort of relationship you have with your siblings.

My brother and I have figured this whole sibling relationship out. The goal is to be the last one standing. As far as we know we are the only two left.  The youngest brother passed on a little over a year ago  and the oldest sister is presumed to have passed on.  We are not entirely sure if she was eaten by wild dogs or just went to commune with the nature.  Either way, I am not going camping anytime soon, (I read Wytches,  I know what to expect.)

There are rules to being the last wizard standing.  (Wizard, sibling... Same thing) It is much like the assassins guild, it is going to take a fair amount of planning and elegance.  You can't just up and knife them in the spleen, you have to get away cleanly also with nothing linking you to that life exipiration date.  That is where elegance and planning come into play. 

My brother and I have a birthday in the same month and this latest attempt on both our parts was perfect. Birthday gifts are the gifts that keep on giving.  It was the if I give you the tools, you will do it your self, in a Darwin Awards sort of way plan that both of us had, that left me laughing at our genius. 

For my birthday my brother sent me a grow your own mushroom kit and assured me that they were edible. It could be considered a thoughtful gift, considering my love for cooking and love for mushrooms, or it could be a subtle way of me poisoning myself, because after all, he didn't make me eat the mushroom, just gave me to the tools to grow it.  It would be my fault, because every one knows you just don't eat random mushrooms.  Clever my brother is. 

For his birthday I got him nunchucks and a set of sais. I could be the best sister in the world, because I know that he needs to embrace his inner Ninja Turtle and the only way to do that is to be armed like a Ninja Turtle.  Or I could be devious and have given him instruments of bodily destruction that if he tries to use them, he could hurt himself.  Sneaky I am.  

I feel like it was a stalemate this round, both of us will survive these gifts, but it has given me some new ideas for the next gift giving holiday.  I am hoping this is a long drawn out game of last wizard standing, because the best part is seeing what the next move is. 

2015 Boiled Down

I love lists.  I love the feeling of being organized and having a clear direction that a list gives me. I wanted to create a list of 15 things to describe 2015. It sounds like a simple thing, but the more that I thought about it, the more daunting the task became.   How does a person describe the glowing bits of happiness with the dark bits of sadness in just a few words? The idea of creating a list was slowly becoming a new year’s resolution. Something that I said I would do, and in my mind I would do, but in reality I would maybe not quite do completely.  

I dislike the term, resolutions.  It makes me feel broken and that something needs fixed. I prefer the word challenges, because it makes me feel like it is something that I can overcome and grow from. With that in mind, I challenged myself to come up with some words that described my 2015 and reflect upon the crunchy bits, to learn from them and help challenge myself to make the most of my 2015 and hope to challenge myself to find ways to enliven my 2016.

1. Welcome to Nightvale
2. Homemade wine
3. Pishing
4. Cherries
5. Bacon Jam
6.  Zumba
7.  Comics
8.  Museums
9.  Thrift Stores
10. Fabric
11. Board Games
12.  Post Cards
13.  Sunblock
14. MST3K
15. Cats

I know that with the word, I didn't put things like Family, or Friends or Love, because it is my belief that all of those things are involved with my core essentials, it is just a way they were manifested in 2015.  I can only anticipate what 2016 will bring.

Dixit: My Rabbit Likes Mushrooms

Dixit is a beautiful game that if you had to compare it to other games, it would be a cross between Pictionary and Apples to Apples with rabbits mixed in for the fun of it.  I discovered Dixit by watching Table Top with Wil Wheaton. I would highly recommend you to check out the Dixit episode on Table Top if you are a visual learner, because  I am going to explain things quite horribly.  (Not intentionally horribly, but I have come to believe that I am one of those people that can over explain, and therefore half kill any interest in playing. Trust me, watch the video if the below doesn't make any sense to you.) 

Yellow Rabbit Forever!

At the beginning of the game, we picked our rabbits. They are cute little wooden rabbits painted various colors. We had a full six players playing so ever rabbit was utilized.  Part of my inner monologue wants to glue little google eyes on the rabbits, but I don't think they make google eyes that small.  The object is to get your rabbit around the board as many times as possible.  Sounds pretty easy. 

Yummy Mushrooms!

The game board is a pretty path full of flowers and mushrooms with little stepping stones to mark progress.  I think the fact that it is full of mushrooms is the key, because some of us that are not that great at the game have their rabbit sitting on a garden path, eating mushrooms. Wooden rabbits love painted mushrooms.  It is a little known board game fact. Or I just have no talent at having anyone pick my card.  I like to think that my rabbit just likes to eat the mushrooms. 

Vote for me!

The person thats turn it is will pick a card out of their hand and put it face down on the table. They give a clue as to what their card is. Every one else puts a card down for that clue. What ever clue is give, you want vague enough that not everyone will get it, but specific enough that someone will get it. You also have to gage your audience as to how literal they are going to take a clue. Once all the cards are gathered, every one but the clue giver gets to vote on which card they think it is.

Clue: Shinning Light

 For example if I gave the clue Shining Light, most people will put a card down that had to do with light.   The  cards in Dixit are beautiful complex works of art and depending on the clue, the players can put almost anything down.   Here are six random cards where put down for  Shining Light. Almost of all them have some sort of light in them and one of them has the absence of light.  The question for the voters is if the person giving the clue is being literal with the clue Shining Light.  

When playing this game, I find I do better if I don't count of my husband to guess my card.  Despite how well he knows me and I know him, we really suck at guessing each others cards. If it is supposed to be one of those old married people bonds, I might develop it in the next ten years, because these last ten years have done not accomplished it yet. He very rarely guesses my card. My suggestion is to try and model your clues to a friend. It took me half a game to figure that out and my rabbit spent a lot of time eating mushrooms on the path and not going anywhere, because I was giving clues that I thought only he would get, and he didn't and neither did anyone else.  

Literal Shining Light

My card I would have played to that clue would be the man in the clouds. I would figure that everyone would put down something that had a light in it, and putting down something the opposite would give the players a pause and would give me at least one vote, which is all I really needed to make any movement on the board. If every one voters for your card, you get no points because you were to specific. I could hope that one person would vote for my cloudy man,  while everyone else would vote for the  literal Shining Light, which a girl in a with a candle inside a light bulb or possibly hand with the torch. 

My Card

You want people to vote for your card, but not every one to vote for your card in order to get your rabbit to move.  This is a beautiful engaging game, that keeps all of the players involved to the very end.  I would highly recommend this game. It is easy to play and a lot of fun. I look forward to the next time I get to play Dixit and I have even ordered an expansion deck, so that I have more beautiful cards to work with in the future.  Until I receive the expansion deck, I will continue the mental debate on if I should glue google eyes on the rabbits. 

A Fat Goblin

When last we left our heroes in Descent: Journeys in the Dark they had just finished rescuing some of the crop bundles in the village. It was now time to rescue the kidnapped villager and let the humble farmer in rough sewn clothing get back to farming.  Grisban the Thirsty despite his deep need to quench his throat trudged along with the rest of the crew and even passed a healing potion to Asherian, which brought her back to full health and in a mood to dance. The combined adrenaline of a successful battle and the sweet after affects of a healing potion put her in an optimistic mood.  

 Leoric of the Book and Avric Albright were not thrilled that Asherian wanted to dance, mostly because she had no rhythm.  The only dance she was good at was in battle with her ability to stun adjacent enemies. Grisban mostly muttered how he could be enjoying a good pint, but no, they had to go rescue some ungrateful farmers learned brother.

When our heroes reached the dwelling that belongs to Sprig, The Fat Goblin it had been decided that Asherian was going to take the lead and Leoric and Avric would chill and recoup some stamina before going in to the cobweb infested foyer. Grisban was cool with this, because it gave him time to catch his breath. His little dwarf legs were not meant to keep up with those that liked to walk faster. 

It was a good thing that Asherian was all healed up, because there was a passel of spiders waiting for them.  There was one boss giant spider and four regular giant spiders that skittered and hissed in the dark.  With the might of Avric Albright the heroes were able to deprive the spiders of a last meal before they met their death. 

The spiders were hardy and took a lot of might for the heroes to over come, but it was nothing compared to the Etins that were waiting in the next room. Leoric got picked up and thrown to the other side of the dungeon and was pretty much useless when that happened. I am pretty sure that if I hit the back of the wall, I might not be so swift to jump up. The goblin horde that was hiding in the lair were attacking and while they were not doing much damage it was still a challenge to get around them.

Sprig was holding the farmers brother over his shoulder and was trying to make a quick exit to the door.  With a stoke of luck and a  couple of lucky dice rolls Asherain was able to completely knock the  farmers brother out off of Sprig's meaty goblin shoulder and onto the hard cold ground. Swearing and uttering threats, the heroes watch Sprig with more speed than they thought possible escape out of the cave and into the bright daylight. Deciding that it was far wiser to return the wayward villager to the safety of the village  than trying to defeat the Etins, they headed to town.  

I am excited to play the next round on Descent:Journeys in the Dark. Despite there being a million little pieces to set up for the game, each time you play you move forward in the story and add experience to the characters. The heroes were able to level up some of their weapons in town and now are ready for the next leg of their adventure, even if there might be dragons.  

Boss Monster

Boss Monster a Dungeon Building Card Game

Boss Monster plays like a side scrolling video game. There is only one direction to go, and it is forward.  The concept is easy to pick up. You have your Boss Monster and to protect your Boss Monster from the persecution of wanna be heroes. To do this you have to build various dungeons for the pesky heroes to way laid. 

 Not only are you trying to build up your tolerance to the intrepid heroic traveler, you are trying build up a greater cash flow from the ones that have perished in the dungeons. Ever hero that is kill equals at least one coin. Get ten coins and you win. If  five Heroes get to the boss monster and you are dead. As the games go on, the heroes get stronger. 

There are spell cards that sometimes help you against the heroes or help you sabotage someone else's dungeon. If you aren't careful, you can really hurt yourself with the spell cards, because you need to be sure you read the card instructions exact. Spells can be used in the dungeon building phase of the game, which is normally a bonus to help you defeat what ever hero is intrepid enough to enter, and other spells are used in you action sequence and can be played against heroes or other dungeons. There are few spells that can be played when ever you want. Use those spells wisely. 

All of the Bosses in Boss Monster have special abilities that you get to unlock when you achieve five dungeons as protections. Depending on what you Boss you have, is going to help you decide how quickly you want to build your fifth room or if you want to upgrade any current rooms. This is a very strategic part of the game, because if you build your last dungeon too soon, your power up from your boss can be defeated and might not do you as much good as it would if it was played at the beginning of the game.  You have to be sure that you read  every single card carefully so that the hero does not get the upper hand. 

When you go about constructing you great and wonderful dungeon that is a refuge for the greatly understood monsters, you have to think about the vast majority of things that monsters would be interested and what peaks the hero's interest to try enter the dungeon.  Each room is going to have a symbol at the bottom right corner. That symbol, be it book, sword, bag of money or ankh is what brings the heroes to the yard, not milkshakes. I wish there was a milkshake dungeon room. I could see a bunch of succubi sitting around and enjoying a good milkshake and having a laugh.  Moving forward, the heroes are interested in either the recognition of defeating the monster (sword), the vast intellect and knowledge (books) or riches (bag of money) and treasure of religious artifact (ankh). 

There is only one hero that is not after the sword, books or ankh, and  that hero is The Fool. He is a really easy kill and is practically a free gold coin if he stumbles into your dungeon. He goes into the dungeon with the least amount of rooms built. His death helps keep starving monsters feed for one more day.  I am pretty sure The Fool has been served in my dungeon cafeteria a couple of times as a delicious soup.  

All other heroes fall into four categories, Fighter, Thief, Mage and Cleric and are drawn to you by how much riches you have that interest them. If you have a lot of book related rooms in your dungeon, the Mage is going to be really interested in you. If it was my dungeon and a Mage come in to pillage my library, I hope the Mage likes to cook, because I am pretty sure they are all cookbooks and maybe not the mystical knowledge of the unknown that he is looking for. My Monster Boss likes to eat well. It is the perks of being a Monster boss.

 The fighter is drawn to the fighting rooms  to achieve the recognition and glory. The Thief is drawn to the shiny gold in the bags, while the Cleric is trying to restore glory to the church and save the non Monsters from damnation. Each Hero has a name and a little blurb underneath them, and some of them are hilarious and tongue in cheek to other popular genres out there. 

 The pixel art is fun and delightful quick play makes Boss Monster an easy grab and go. There are no small pieces to lose, and the game can run from 15 to 20 minutes with experienced players and about 45 for first timers, because you really need to read every card. This is good game to have in any gaming collection and is a great 2 to 4 player game that is good for a variety of age ranges.    Enjoy!

Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Curse you, Wil Wheaton! Curse you TableTop! Darn you for opening a door to entertainment that gets me away from the television and hanging out with my friends. If not for you I would probably not have wonderful new games to play or be willing to try new games that you haven't featured on TableTop, because they look like fun. Every time I watch TableTop I want to open my wallet and give you all the money and play all of the games. One of the games that has not been featured on TableTop that has made it into the house is Descent: Journeys in the Dark. 

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a game that my husband researched and picked up. He spent a lot of time painting all of the game pieces. Decent is a dungeon crawler with a hundred different pieces. There is an entire story line that goes with the game and the objectives change with each twist and turn of the story. Each time you play the game the experience from previous boards follow your character to the next plot twist in the story. It sounds complicated and it is, somewhat. It is one of those games, that while it may take a while to set up the dungeon because there are different snap together boards and to set up the tokens and game markers. Once everything is set up, it is actually a pretty smooth game of strategy mixed with chance.

Today we played part of the second mission called The Fat Goblin. We enter into the town of Arhynn to trade and restock supplies when the Goblin Horde ransacks the place and is trying to make off with the harvested crops, which would leave the town destitute in the winter. Not only are there goblins scampering all over the place pillaging the once peaceful village, they brought with them a pack of ill mannered zombie dogs that have fleas and maggots and are running a muck, scaring small children in rough simple clothes. The rudeness knows no bounds.  It is not easy being a hero, when stuff like this happens. I am pretty sure that all Grisban the Thirsty wants to be doing is not wielding an axe at the scruffy mutts and would rather be raising a mug and telling drunk tales of the adventure he just came from. A heroes work is never done.

With a combination of good card play and really bad dice throws on my part, Grisban the Thirsty along with the help of his fellow hero companions, Asherian, Leoric of the Book and Avric Albright, the heroes were able to wrestle two out of the four harvest bundles from the scampering mischievous goblins with minimum damage to their health and stamina.  I am pretty sure that more villagers and crop bundles would have been lost if not for the strategic planning of Leoric of the Book.

Rescuing the bundles of harvested crops is only part of the quest, because now the fearsome foursome have to go rescue all those idiots that weren't smart enough to run and hide when a goblin horde is messing up the neighborhood. There is a farmer that believes his brother is being targeted in this, and even though Grisban thinks the blood spattered farmer in rough simple clothes has had one too many knocks to the head from fending off some maggoty zombie dogs, he has agreed to get drunk after they rescue his brother and the rest of the missing villagers, despite the fact that he fights better drunk.  Asherian thinks that is really big of him, but Grisban is pretty sure that Asherian is just being sarcastic about the whole thing.

And this is the end of part one of The Fat Goblin. The next part of the journey is where the heroes invade the Goblin Horde's home base and try to take back what is theirs, while trying to keep from dying. A lot of Goblins have been made orphans by these heroes and are probably out for revenge and farmers probably taste good in stew.

I am looking forward to the next round of this game. The more you play, the more you get into the different twists and turns of the story, and the more you come to appreciate the different aspects of the characters involved. If you are interested in seeing more of the amazing games pieces that my husband painted, here is a link to his blog on Board Game Geek.

Trying New Stuff is Scary

Trying new stuff is scary.  I don't know about every one else, but there is a phase when I am trying anything new that my immediate reaction is that I don't like it.  I don't like it because I don't understand it. I don't like it because I am not good at it. I don't like it because it isn't with in my normals. Then I do the same things over and over and over again, until it comes to a point that I feel dull and lifeless. At this point I start to crave trying something new, just so that the regular becomes refreshing.

I think the only way to grow is to move out side of your comfort zone. It is also the hardest thing for me to do. Thankfully I don't have to do it alone. There are people in my life that constantly challenge me to be more than what I am and help me shape the path to which I want to grow. Those that challenge, encourage and inspire me to be more than what I already am are dear to me.

 "You'll never change your life, until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in yours daily routine." - John C. Maxwell

Routine is easy. It would be those things that I do all the time.
I am pretty sure that I have procrastination down pat as part of my daily routine. I want to be a person of action and not to grow dull and boring.  In order to do that, I have to change the part of my routine that has to do with procrastination and I needed to move out of my comfort zone.

I am the sort of person that takes small steps, and if those small steps don't kill me, then I jump right in. The first step that I took was in and area that isn't a huge stretch of my comfort zone. I stepped into the kitchen. I often get bored with fixing the same things over and over again. My friend Lizzy told me of an experiment that she was trying to run, which involved her using at least one recipe out of all of her cooks books with in a year. Seeing that the first quart of the year is over and I have over 50 cook books in my house, I decided to scale my experiment down a bit and try some of those recipes that I bookmark on Pinterest. If you are going to experiment, I think it is always good to have test subjects, dinner guests were invited.

The menu consisted of slow braised Pork Ragu with Garlic Gnocchi's, Endive and Frisee Salad with Oranges and a dessert of Vanilla Coconut Rice Pudding.  It was a tall order for a Sunday dinner, mostly because I had only ever made gnocchi from scratch twice before and never with potatoes, and some of the combinations in the Pork Ragu made me head to the grocery store and look for things that I had never purchased before.  Then came the Rice Pudding, it sounded easy, until I realized that I had invited a vegan over for dinner and had to replace the milk with almond milk, which made me really skeptical if it was going to turn out.  I spent a day in the kitchen rolling gnocchi and fretting.

It was nerve racking because there is the fear that dinner was going to be horrible and we would have to order out for pizza. It was out of my comfort zone, but it was refreshing and it painful and it was delicious. Everything turned out. Everyone lived, and I learned a couple of new recipes that I will try again.

Next step was to learn a new game.  I enjoy playing various board games, and it is an easy routine to play the ones that you already know.  My husband came up with a great idea to have a game day. We would invite more test subjects/friends over and make a day of playing new games. With beer and chili with armed ourselves and started to go through the stack of games.

Love Letter is a game of  deduction and luck, and only needs a couple of people play. It is a quick game and once you get the rules, it becomes a game of learning how to read  other people, and in some way reminded me a bit about poker. You wanted to try and figure out what was in every one else's hand, because that was the difference between winning and losing.  It was the perfect game to ease us into other games.  Smash Up was next on the list, and my husband had seen it on Tabletop, so he had a fair idea of what to expect.  I had no clue on it and at the beginning I struggled, because I didn't get it immediately.  I had thought about quitting the game, because I thought it was just too hard. It isn't a hard game. It just wasn't in my preconceived notions as to what to expect. Instructions on how to play were feeling Greek to me, and everything wasn't clicking.  The more I stuck with it and the more turns that passed, the easier it became. I realized that I was having fun at the game and that sometimes I just need to get over my initial dislike of being out of my comfort zone and everything would get easier. The more tense I was about something the harder it would get.

If only I could remember that lesson when I decided to try Zumba. Zumba is an exercise program that is based off of dancing.  Zumba helped me remember more things about myself than I had expected, and they weren't positive things. I remembered about how little coordination I really do have. I was reminded of body parts that haven't stretched in years, and I was way out of my comfort zone with people that I didn't know, which is scary to me. I was reminded that I like to be good at things, and I get frustrated when I am not adequate at things.  I didn't know any of the dance moves, and there is no baby steps to learning it. You just have to jump right in.  By the end of the program I was drenched in sweat and hurt in area's that weren't funny, and was pretty sure that Zumba was an endurance test for a zombie invasion.

I however did not try Zumba alone. And while we sat panting in the car after the end of the class we talked about it. We discussed if we didn't like it because it was new or if it was because we were uncoordinated and felt like idiots.  It was a cross of both reasons we decided in the end. Then the big question came up, do we try it again. I find that in order to make something not new, you have to do it over and over again. Since that first class, I have taken another two Zumba classes and will probably continue for a while, because even though I am almost positive that I will never be graceful, the benefits out way the discomfort.  I can say that I definitely had a work out. I might be slow to get to know people, but every one in the class seems nice and pleased to see me when I attend, and ever so slowly I am getting better.  Is it still out of my comfort zone?  Yes. Is it making me a better person and hopefully a healthier person? Yes.  

All these new experiments didn't kill me, and no friends were harmed in these experiments. It also brought to light some things that I learned about myself and things that I learned about the people around me, and over all made me a better and some what more interesting person. Will I continue to try new things? I hope so, and I hope to always move in a forward direction, no matter how awkward that my be in the process.

Party Brilliance

Birthdays roll around once a year like clock work. Some of them are celebrated with full fan fair and others go softly into the wind.  Several years back my dear friend Nic was changing decades. For some this could be a very nervous and nerve wracking event.  Nic is a trooper and nothing phases, especially changing of decades. For my fearless friend,  I came up with the perfect Party Idea.  It is so perfect that I have tried this party idea several times and have had nothing but wonderful results.   I would recommend this party idea for anyone that is looking to surprise any one with a couple of years under their belt.

First think you would want to do is pick a victim, I mean friend, as to whose birthday you would like to celebrate.  I recommend picking a friend is changing of decades or  a random number that no one pays much attention to like 33 or 47.  Once you have your sites set on a person, the planning needs to begin right away. This sort of party needs to be planned ahead, but not in the time consuming way.  You would want to pick a place to have a party and a general idea of who you want to invite. Once you you get that out of the way, the real fun begins.

The fun is in the clues!

What ever age the person is turning is how many gifts that person is going to get. So if they were going to be turning thirty you would be getting them thirty gifts. Now I know that this sounds like it is going to cost you a bunch financially, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you have your guest list, you can round up some volunteers to help with the shopping expenses.  My biggest suggestion for gift buying is not the cost of the gift but the wit behind the gift.

The is a really good reason that I recommend the wit of gift and not the cost. When you get the gifts gathered, you will want to start coming up with clues.  Each gift is to be numbered and then have a clue as to what the gift is attached or written on it. Coming up for clues is not as easy as it sounds. You want to give a clue with out giving it away.

Here are a couple of examples as to what I mean about clues.

Example #1

Clue: At Least it isn’t A Stripper

Guess: Wall paper remover

Gift: Couple of Steamy Romance Novels

Example # 2

Clue: Now containing Matcha

Guess: Sushi Roll or a Small South Amrican Primate

Gift: Box of Green Tea

Example # 3

Clue: Love should be fun!

Guess: Video Game

Gift: Heart Shaped box containing rubber duckies and bubble bath

Part of the fun of the party is listening to what the birthday person guess what they think is inside the box. By numbering the gifts and doing a random draw on numbers, it guarantees that the birthday person can not anticipate which gift they are going to open next and neither do the party guests.  If you have guests that bring gifts that exceed the number of pre-arranged gifts simply put a number on it and let them write their own clue. When the birthday person gets to that gift, tell them that it is one to grow on.

***If this post look familiar, it is because it is. I originally had posted this on my old blog, and I am finally moving some of my favorite pieces and reviews over.  I still think this is an excellent party plan, and have been involved in a total of 5 these style parties, and every time they have been a hit. ***