quit playin' games with my heart

I LOVE to entertain. Love love love it. If I had to, I would eat cabbage soup every night so that I could save a few dollars to properly entertain my guests. I love preparing for a party, I love the anticipation of the guests arriving, and I especially love having my house full of people and laughs and delicious little tid-bits.

I recently came up with the idea of putting together a girls-only Game Night a) because I love playing board games and b) because I thought it'd be a fun way for us girls to get together and do something besides simply eating or drinking. I have this terrific group of girls with whom I used to work, and we have made a habit of getting together from time to time to catch up over dinner. Well, I said, how about we turn these random nights out together into a once-a-month-sort-of-deal? And they most happily agreed!

I wont get into the nitty-gritty details ( I was recently informed that I am a Type A personality ~ who knew? ) but I'll tell you the basics just in case you feel inspired to put together your own game group. And by all means, invite boys to your group, I just happen to be boy-less, and thought I'd take the opportunity to keep it to us gals while most of us are still un-wed.

1. The perfect number of group members for Game Night is 6, because it's an even number, and it also means that each person gets to host 2 game nights per year (6x2=12 months in the year).

2. The group organizer serves as Hostess the 1st Game Night, and the rest of the girls follow alphabetically. Once everyone hosts once, the sequence starts again.

3. The Hostess is responsible for providing at least 1 food item and 1 beverage option, the game, as well as a theme if she chooses to do so. Themes are strongly encouraged.

4. Each girl other than the Hostess alternates bringing a food item or a beverage option each Game Night. The best way to keep track of this is to just assign 3 people FOOD for the first Game Night and 3 people BEVERAGE, and then make sure the hostess knows to provide BOTH when it's her Game Night. If a girl was responsible for bringing a food item to the 1st Game Night, then she is responsible for bringing a beverage option to the next Game Night, and so on and so forth. Also, group members should try their best to bring a food/beverage that goes along with their Hostess's chosen theme.

Seeing as I would be the first to serve as Hostess and therefore responsible for setting the bar for all Game Nights going forward, I just had to bring out all the stops. So what did I choose? Ah, the possibilities!!