2 fun holiday things

for kids and grownups alike

A quickie! Because I wanted to share two fun ideas for holidays, parties, and other big group gatherings—especially ones with mixed-age people, people who don’t know each other, and shy people. I promise I won’t keep spamming your inbox with random thoughts, ha ha ha! Or will I?

This is ten years ago. Sob!

Here’s the first fun thing. Before our guests arrive, we arrange a still life on the big table (and by “still life” I mean “a single pear” because I am obsessed with pears) and set up little watercolor stations. At each station is a folded piece of newspaper with a smallish piece of watercolor paper (we cut up pages of this pad), a sharpened pencil, a brush, a glass of water, and a piece of paper towel. There tends to be one set of watercolors for every 2 people or so (you could put out colored pencils or markers or whatever you’ve got), and my absolute two favorite sets are these and these. People can paint if they like, or they can mill around very very close to me in the kitchen where I am just trying to WHISK THE FUCKING GRAVY FOR GOD’S SAKE.

We have been doing this for years and years and the folks who always come to everything look forward to it, and any folks who are new are excited about it, and it makes a great ice breaker or a fun and stylish way to introvert.

Plus: free paintings because people rarely take them when they leave!

The second fun thing is the game Fishbowl, which we always play on Thanksgiving and which is another excellent all-ages situation. Do you know it? These are the rules. They might seem complicated, but they’re not:

Cut up lots of little slips of paper and put out pens and pencils, then ask everyone to take four pieces of paper and write a single word on each. Have each person fold their pieces of paper in half and put them into a bowl. Split into multiple teams of two people each (or two big teams if you prefer).

There are three rounds in Fishbowl: 1) Taboo 2) Password 3) Charades.

Round 1: Taboo

The first team picks someone to go first, while someone from another team sets a timer for one minute. The person going first will grab a piece of paper from the bowl and try to have their teammate guess the word on the paper by saying whatever they want—no motions—as long as it’s not the word itself. For example, if the word is swing, you might say, “It’s on a playground. You’re on it, pumping your legs, like, push me higher!” The person tries to have their teammate guess as many words as they can within one minute.

After one minute, the team counts the number of successfully guessed words and scores 1 point for each. Don’t put the slips back in the bowl. Now the next team goes, and so on, until you run out of words. Now put all the words back in the bowl for the second round.

Round 2: Password
Play will continue, 1 minute per team, only now the person can only use one single word as a hint for their team to guess. (For example, if the word is swing, you might say, “Playground,” and hope your teammate was paying attention during the first round.) When the words run out, put them back in for the third round.

Round 3: Charades
In this final round, the person needs to silently act and use motions as hints for their teammate to guess the word. (For example, if the word is swing, you can stand up and gyrate your hips back and forth awkwardly, which is a thing that actually happened here once #Viveca.) When all the words run out, tally all the points. The team with the most points wins the game.    

Photo for VIBES ONLY because here we are actually playing Animal Upon Animal in an AirBnB in Barcelona.

Want a fun already-made game that serves the same purpose? Try Telestrations, which is basically a cross between Telephone and Pictionary.

Have a wonderful holiday, my darlings! Back next week with some gift ideas.

xo