Valentine's Party.... the details........

I guess I didn't write too many details about the Valentine's party in here because I've had eMail from out-of-state friends who wanted to know more, more, more......... So here goes......

First of all, the foods for the potluck dinner were outstanding....... Italian meatballs, Greek green beans, Swedish meatballs, sweet potato casserole, homemade chocolate cake, chicken salad with artichokes & olives, chicken casserole, tossed salad with lots of different ingredients, a Mexican taco casserole, baked bread sprinkled with cheese, homemade lemon squares, homemade cookies, and of course, Valentine candies.

The cellophane bag that I filled with the tiny candy hearts was a lot of fun...... everyone wrote their guesses on pink post-it notes (heart-shaped)..... and I had prizes for the man and the woman who came the closest to the correct number. The one whose guess was the furthest from the correct amount got to take home the bag of candy hearts. And I had that card with the little quiz called "What Kind of Shoe Are You?"..... that was a lot of fun, but I think just the ladies took the quiz, not the guys. (I typed out that quiz in here....... you can find it if you scroll back a bit on the titles.)

We had twenty large red heart-shaped balloons. I gave each of the ladies one of those... I tied the balloons right onto their gift-bags. I had those balloons tied up outside by the front walkway, and every statue in the house had a balloon tied to it. The balloons, and all of my little heart-shaped boxes on all of the end tables, plus the centerpiece I made for the table--- we had a festive, red-sprinkled house for the party.

I had found the softest red teddy-bears for this party.... so the ladies who I thought were 'teddy-bear people' got a Valentine bear..... the others got a small heart-shaped pillow. I also filled the women's gift bags with chocolate Kisses, heart-shaped soap, hand cream in a Valentine-decorated container, heart-shaped emery boards, heart-shaped notepaper... and for the ladies who like to read-- a romantic book. For the husbands, I gave them each a funny cartoon-like book called "For Better Or Worse"--- cartoons about love & marriage. I also found red-covered business-card holders (sort of a binder to hold business cards... keeps them all very handy and near the phone). I also had chocolate Kisses and Valentine candy in the bags for the men. I also found comedy videos for the guys--- different titles, trying to give each of the guys what I thought they'd be interested in.

The Charades game was the loudest, funniest, most frustrating game....... and the men won. I had written out the titles of love songs on heart-shaped cards for the men to guess. All of the songs I picked had the word 'love' in the title. You had to see the guys acting out the word love. -- They stood there pounding their heart with their fist and rolling their eyes....... as if just the word was a cross they had to bear. The guys guessed just about all of the clues..... which, of course, is why they won.

The women had to guess titles of movies and songs that my husband printed out and pasted onto heart-shaped cards. He looked through lists on the Internet, and came up with the most obscure, most ridiculous, most unlikely names/places/songs/movies/people that you've ever heard of. All of us were saying What? Are you sure? Is that the title? Very frustrating, to say the least, especially when my clues for the men were so much easier, with that four-letter word in each of their answers.

After Charades, we popped open the Victorian gift-crackers, and that's always a lot of fun. Between the fire-cracking sound of the "snaps" and then the paper crowns and little gifts and riddles tucked inside, it's a good way to end the craziness of Charades.

And we are a crazy group, I must say. One of my clues (which the ladies couldn't guess) was the song "A Groovy Kind of Love." Well, I did all I could think of to get them to say the word groovy but nothing worked. We each have three minutes to act out the Charade, and I went over the three minutes, but the men didn't say anything because they were having such a good time watching me strut around the living room to the groovy beat that I was playing in my head. (Note to myself: Don't ever do that again.)

So that's about the story of the party...... it was comical and crazy, frustrating and funny. And... just to make sure the clues for next Valentine's Day aren't as ridiculous as this year's, I've already filled up those paper hearts with love songs, love movies, and all things related to Valentine's Day. I figure that by the time next February comes around, I will have forgotten everything I wrote down on those heart-shaped cards.