What To Do For Porch And Garden Parties
Article by Liza Othman
Entertaining on the Porch
For the outdoor party you might decorate your porch tastefully with flowers. Take a picture of it with a small camera and have it printed on a post card on which you might write a few words of invitation.
Progressive Letters
A good game for the porch is “Progressive Letters”. In the center of each of four tables is a pile of letters placed face downward. The hostess announces that the guests are to go to a dry-goods store and make purchases. Then the fun begins, especially for the gentlemen, who are not used to shopping. If you draw an “R” and cannot immediately think of some article to purchase in a dry-goods store beginning with that letter, and the one to your left says “Ribbon”, she gets the point. The partners obtaining the most points progress. Then the hostess announces that they must call at the drug store for a few purchases; then at the hardware store and the grocery store. After they have done sufficient shopping they are ready to take a trip. This time the letters they draw tell the rivers to be crossed, the cities to be visited and the names of the people they will meet on their tour.
Pin Contest
Another diversion which may be used is a Pin Contest. For this supply each guest with a saucer and one strip of pins from a new package. At a signal each one must take out all the pins and place them in a saucer, and then within a given time put them back in the same holes in the paper.
This is not so easy as it seems, as hurried fingers are sometimes clumsy and the pins must be picked up and put in place one at a time.
Tete-a-Tete Luncheon Boards
Tete-a-tete luncheon boards are a novelty for a small garden party. Partners are seated facing each other and given a lapboard fifteen inches by twenty-four, covered with a linen cloth. A luncheon of sandwiches and salads may be taken care of very comfortably by this means. If used for evening affairs small tables may be placed about to hold the shaded lights, bonbons, olives, etc.
If you have not enough small tables to use on your porch for small groups and your dining room is too limited to seat as many as you wish to invite make each guest a tray of thin board, twelve by fifteen inches, covering it with white paper; then cover pieces of lath with paper, nailing these to the edges and ends of the board, making a strong, unique tray. When your guests have assembled tell them you have arranged a “Cafeteria Supper”. Ask each one to take a tray and go into the dining room, where napkins and silver are first to be placed on the tray, then kindly to go around the dining table, liberally serving oneself from every dish, and return to the porch to eat. Drinks, milk, lemonade, iced tea and buttermilk should be placed on a table in the living room. When this course is finished request each one to place the soiled dishes in a small back room (on a table prepared) and once more to go around the dining-room table for the salad course This procedure may be repeated for ice cream, coffee and cake.
Vacation Trip On The Porch
A “Vacation Trip on the Porch” may be made quite enjoyable. Make your porch as festive as you can with pennants, cushions and ferns. Provide a stock of old magazines, scissors and mucilage. Two girls who tried this plan invited thirty girls and arranged eight tables for the “crowd”. They cut fake railway tickets in two for partners. Then they told their guests that summer was vacation-time and they were going to give them all a trip. For the best account when they returned a prize would be given.
Booklets were provided, entitled, “My Vacation”, and on each page were pictured the “Conveyances We Rode In, “The Hotels At Which We Stopped”, “What We Ate”, “How We Spent Our Time”, “What We Saw”, “People We Met”, etc.
A welcome home in the form of a good supper should await the travelers, and any little convenience for traveling, such as a collapsible drinking cup, would make a suitable prize for the best souvenir booklet.
More ideas for fun parties and games at “The Book of Games and Parties for All Occasions”.
About the Author
Liza Othman manages an ebook website at http://FunHowToBooks.com. More ideas for fun parties and games at http://BookOfGames.FunHowToBooks.com/