Annual Holiday Themed Bingo - Senior living fun! Party decorations, favors, treats, hot cocoa mugs, gifts, candy, and the cutest elf!

We call bingo at our local retirement residence every Sunday and a special bingo for holidays. 

Last year was a winter theme and this year we did red, green, and gold. 

Every year we hand out small gifts. It's just a little "thinking about you" gift but when you have 20+ people it can get pricey! I usually make edible gifts like Santa Cakes or dipped pretzels and our winter event last year we gave out a scalp massagers and all the residents loved them.

I found most of the items at the Dollar Tree, Walgreens, or Michael's.

My decorating crew and the cutest elf. He usually loves to dress up but wasn't too thrilled about his elf costume.

He's soooo cute! 

We used the wrapped picture frames as our backdrop/photobooth area. I have some really cute photos. 

For our gifts:

After Christmas last year I found mugs on sale for .25 cents and decided to get them ALL!

So many ideas of how to fill them!

• Candy (Hershey Kisses in Christmas colors)
• Lindor candy
• Hot coco - add a mini Baileys bottle and Hot chocolate Christmas spoon.
• Tea
• Candy canes
• Fuzzy socks 
• Nail polish and emery board
• Lotion

Each mug was filled with hot cocoa, 2 candy canes, marshmallow peep, 3 kit kats (not shown) and 6 Hershey's kisses. 

Wrapped the peeps individually.

A little hot glue to keep the heart shape. 

I found large cello bags at HEB and wrapped each mug individually.

I used the mugs and necklaces to decorate the tables. 

At the end of bingo we handed out gifts to all the residents. 

Large print word search books and pencils from the dollar store.

I decided to wrap them all the same.

Tired after all the attention. :)

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Large PUNCH CUP GAME - carnival PRIZE IDEA - easy, fun, & inexpensive - Classroom - school incentive for kids

I absolutely love this game!!

Remember the bee themed library celebration 2 years ago?
 I was tasked with coming up with a large scale game that was great for all ages, inexpensive, could be delegated to a group to assemble, and easy to setup and run the day of the event. WHEW!!! I thought of so many ideas but kept coming back to this concept.

So I made a mini version and presented it to the board for approval.

Now the hard part....delegating. I'm a perfectionist and other people, well, some think glue strings are okay, don't care if it's symmetrical, and so what if it's not cut straight. Of course those things matter!!!!!!!

I purchased most of the novelty items at Party City and found some really good value packs.

Pre-cut tissue paper templates and purchased the cups, rubber bands, and foam core boards.

Just like the test version of the game, I also ran a test version of delegating with my boys. We worked out anything that might need extra instructions so I wasn't super bossy the day of assembly. I did twitch quite a bit but I think overall I handled it well. :P

Day of assembly:

Tissue paper cutters

Toy fillers

Cup cover-ers x 2

I suggested covering the cups as a two person job. One person wrap the tissue around the cup and hold tight in place and the second person add the rubber band. This worked well since it's hard to get the tissue on tight doing it one handed and I also found that the styrofoam cups crush easily.

We stored all the cups in large storage bins.

Everything done in 1 hour!!!

The only thing I couldn't delegate was attaching the cups to the boards. I wanted a pattern, perfectly straight, and exactly the same on each board. 

I put all the board on the table and started lining the cups.
Alternating color and testing placement. 5 rows of 9 on each board.

To attach I added hot glue on the bottom of each cup. 

I made 5 boards of 45.

I spent about an hour in the workroom at the library with a glue gun in hand and perfectly placed each cup. Ahhh my happy place.

Since they were all even they stacked well for storage until the day of the event. 

TIP: I used a sharp exacto knife and made a tiny X in the center of each cup so they would rip and not pull the tissue down. 

My son ran the game and had a blast!! 

The aftermath :)

I think this would be awesome for a school carnival or classroom incentive game or party. So fun and easy.

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