Saturday was my grandmother's side of the family reunion. I love/hate reunions and I wasn't sure if I wanted to go this year. By this time, already almost a year after we have returned from Okinawa, I was starting to get annoyed... no I was annoyed with the questions about how I liked it, if we were home before the earthquake had happened, where we happy to be home, blahblahblah everyone can probably figure out the rest from there. Now I do love my family, LOVE them. Tuesday I had called my grandmother to see if there was anything that she needed help with or needing anything for the reunion. I mentioned if she still needed a few games, just planning on printed out a few printed ones, she told me that we really didn't have any this year. The only ones who were doing the games never told her what they were doing or even what age group. We knew my uncle (her brother) would be doing some, he does every year, but we needed some more.
Tuesday night, actually Wednesday morning if you wanted to be technical, we (my sister, best friend, bf's son, bf's boyfriend, and I) headed out for Pittsburgh. About 2 and a half hours we arrived at our hotel for the "night" it was about 4:30-5 am in the morning. We slept for an hour before my friend and I dropped my sister at the airport. Later that day we headed out with the rest of the gang to eat and then visit the zoo. The reason I had them come along was because I didn't want to drive home myself and manly because they tried to visit the zoo a week earlier and their car broke down about 30mins from Pitt. ): After a fun night we headed home and I pretty much passed out after I arrived home and brought my bags in.
Thursday morning I sat down and thought for awhile on what we could do for games. I had a long list that my mother and I narrowed down to about a page. Between running errands that day and a bunch of other things it was almost 9pm before I thought about the games again. That left me one day to get games ready for the reunion. Oh no! Friday my mom and I went shopping for game items and shoes for her golf tournament she was on. We narrowed my list down to 8 games in the car and made a visit to Micheal's and a dollar store. The games we planned...
- Baby Bottle Race
- M&M Challenge
- Guess What?
- Toys and Games Decade Challenge (printed game)
- Family Ties Game (another printed game)
- T-shirt Race
- Balloon Challenge
- Saltine Challenge
- Fishing (for the kids under 3)
We only ended up playing 3 of these because it rained almost all day. But I was glad Sat morning that I had planned so many because the other cousin who was suppose to bring games didn't end up coming. Only my uncle and I had games. I pulled out my printed games and passed them out after dinner. Everyone claimed they were "hard" but they enjoyed them. My uncle did his games with the younger kids while I helped my aunt and that with the games/actives we have every year. Those include a guessing game that my aunt does for 3 different age ranges. Two for the kids (boys and girls), one for the teens, and then of course one for the adults. We also have a door prize and a Chinese auction. Not going to get into those though. :) I do have a tutorial on how I made the other game that we had Saturday that I am going to share with you all. It was a hit and I didn't expect many people to play it, almost half of everyone there did it. I was happy and we all got a kick out of their faces!
How to make a "Guess What?" Game
Just a simple game of guess what the items are. Without looking of course...
This game is very simple and pretty cheap. All together I probably spent about 15 dollars, not including the prizes. You will need the following items,
- Some type of boxes
- Cheap storage containers
- Randoms things that will feel weird
- Felt or Fabric Scraps
- Glue Gun
- Tape (optional)
- Box Cutter or Exacto Knife
For boxes you can see I used shoe boxes. They were free and because I had so many things to guess I "split" them in half. I say "spilt" because in the picture later you will be cardboard in the middle. I ripped this out later because it wasn't working. I put this all together around 11 at night so I was tired and didn't have real good light so excuse the bad lighting in the pictures. Next year I plan on doing the same game with different items and maybe another way of holding things. All the boxes that had any liquid in them got a little gross after about 5 people went though.
Of course first thing to do is figure out what you want people to guess. I took the picture above the night before but ended up using something extra and switching something out. My list was the following; Kids Toy (pick octopus above), Fake burrs (replaced the silly string), Oasis, Car Sponge, Play-Doh, Pop Tabs, Decorative Water Beads, Cereal Beans, Felt (not pictured), Moss, Coffee, and Vienna Sausages.
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Cut holes a little bigger then what you need to fit your hand though. Some men may want to play too so you have to account for their hands. Cut a piece of felt a little larger then the hole and glue it inside to make a curtain for those wondering eyes. You want people to feel and guess, so no peeks!
See that piece of card board I glued in between? It made me so angry. You can do this if you want but I ended up tearing them out after doing 3 like that.
4 of my boxes had a hole in the side or two. I just used the cut piece from the hand holes and hot glued it over the hole so no peeks could be made that way.
Next take your containers and glue then down so they can not be knocked over or pulled out.
That cardboard taunts me...
For the car sponge and the moss I didn't use a container, just glued then too the box. I did cut about a quarter of the sponge and only used it to save room in the box. I used a small piece of felt on the back on one box as a guess. I used scissors to pull it apart a little like you would be going to use it for needle felting. It gave it a texture of a cotton ball or something.
I didn't get any pictures of the finished project. It was about 1am when I finished and I knew I had to be up at 8 to head over and help set things up. I used 6 boxes for my game and had 13 items to guess. My last box (the big red and black wolverine box, my husband's work boots for the winter) was split into 3. One guess I used the play-doh container with the beans in it to kind of though off people a little. I also wet the oasis where as you can leave it dry. If you do use sausages like I did, or even beans try and see if you can take that box away quick and perhaps switch out for fresh. They get a little smashed after a few go though. My sausages went from the guess of hot dogs to cat food after about 6 people. :D If you want you can avoid things that will mush and gross all together.
Another note, make sure your boxes are large enough. The pink airwalk box I used was very narrow and caused a few problems.
Tape your lids down if you want, that way no one can peek while playing but you can still remove after for people to see what everything was. I simple ripped up some paper for them to wright down the numbers and name the items. I had everyone turn in their papers once they were done. I also had hand sanitizer at the end for people who felt "gross" after and paper towels/napkins at the start since I knew things might get messy.
Set it up and enjoy!
Over all everyone had fun. Those going though and those who sat and watched. We even took the boxes over to my aunt who has a bit of trouble standing for awhile. She always has the best things to say, and everyone cracked up at her expressions and what she said after.
I would say the outcome was great and it was so easy to clean up. We just kept the pop tabs and octopus toy, then tossed everything in the trash. I has a 4 way tie and just used some food prizes I had.
Let me know what you use and how everyone liked it if you decide to play!
We had a great time, but isn't that what family is? My family is always sure to laugh when we all get together. We are rather large and are full of some nuts! But that is why I love em..
I leave you with a picture of most of the grand/great grand daughters.
The Valley Girls
Can you pick out me?
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