How to use your powers — and parties — for good
On New Year’s Eve, we raised over $2,000 for a local food bank by dressing up, showing off, and getting cheerfully smashed with 30 or so of our best buds. We don’t have loads of cash, a fancy venue, or any (particularly) super powers, so how’d we pull off this feat? By focusing on what we do have.
How to throw an ugly party: an exercise in self-restraint and people skills
NO! Not another pretty party! With perfectly-planned coordinating courses, a playlist, and cleverly-crafted decorations! NOT TODAY! Today, we celebrate the ugly party.
This winter I have been learning the value of the ugly party. The unplanned party. The no-decorations, unfancy food, just-get-together-and-love-it party. These impromptu parties have been some of the most enjoyable socials I’ve been to all year — and I think hosting an ugly party fosters skills you need to ensure you’ll never attend a boring party again.
How to make an animated gif party invitation
I love animated gifs! They’re like the magical photos in the Potterverse. Here’s a reason you can make one this week: PARTY TIME. Whether you’re planning a Super Bowl party, a Valentine’s Day cocktail hour, or just a mid-winter soiree, you can make an animated gif invitation in a few quick steps.
Throw this party: A Nerdy Thirty birthday party
About two weeks before my 30th birthday, someone reminded me that my “dirty thirty” was coming up soon. To which Aaron, that guy I married, responded: “With Megan, it’s more like her nerdy thirty.” And thus, a theme was born!
This is how I pulled off one hell of an awesome Nerdy Thirty birthday theme with only two weeks to plan, and with a little help from my friends.
Wedding decor-turned home-decor and a tent in a bright green and blue room in this week’s reader photos
Start your week with our collection of interesting articles on the web and photos from our readers. This week: a tent bed and a serendipitous score from a movie theater. In these Clicky Links you’ll find lots of sites to waste a little time on.
Click through, too, to find our links on submitting YOUR stuff to Offbeat Home!
Social media and social faux pas
The use of social media in modern-day event planning and celebrating is a relatively unexplored territory, short of making events and inviting people to them, marking them private or public, and waiting for the RSVPs to come in. Most of my friends keep their more formal, more intimate, or more serious gatherings off Facebook entirely; it seems to be the province of housewarmings, open birthday parties, drunken meet-ups, and house parties. Wedding invitations, funerals, bar and bat mitzvot, anniversary parties — all of these seem to be too formal for an event on Facebook, at least in my social group.
However, the post-party roundup seems to go un-addressed in a lot of modern etiquette discussions. Putting an album of pictures up on Facebook where friends who weren’t invited to the party can see them? Deciding whether to post a status thanking your biggest helpers and supporters so they can get some community love? Handling how to address the people who were invited but didn’t RSVP, or the people who weren’t invited who feel like they should have been? None of these things are handled in advice columns…
Dottie’s cookie (and pizza) party
We believe strongly in letting our kids decide what parties they’re throwing (I mean, how else would we have ended up with Nora Lea’s last birthday theme?) Asking Dottie, “What kind of birthday party do you want to have?” returned the answer, “COOKIE PARTY!” so James and I shrugged and went to work and came up with an assemble-your-own-cookies-and-pizza party concept — which turned out pretty simple. Assembling your own food helps divert attention from food sensitivities and gives guests something to do when conversation slows.
Non-sucky Christmas songs to take back your ears
Scenario: I’m having a holiday party and need party-music-that-sounds-cool-but-also-wintry.
Scenario: My cube-mate’s been playing Christmas tunes since Dec. 1. If I hear Mariah Carey sing All I Want for Christmas is You once more I will snap. I’d like to take over the airwaves with my own mix for a day — what’s a good list to work from?
Scenario: I JUST LOVE CHRISTMAS SONGSSS!
Offbeat Home has solutions to all the scenarios — songs to stream and songs to buy that are full of jinglebells.