Christmas fun and games

Good grief this week is dragging on! Maybe it's because it's been so unproductive. The morning job is quiet at the moment, and although the freelance stuff carries on, I'm waiting on info from one or two clients, so my hands are tied on some projects.

At least I've been making lots of jewellery for my Christmas open day on 5 Dec (eeep - so close now). I'm starting to get nervous about that. I just hope that the other crafters coming to sell their wares make good money and that those coming along to buy find something they like.

At the moment, I have my jewellery stall (I'm also selling gift bags, homemade yummies and some kiddies stocking fillers), a lady selling pewter crafts (she's without a job at the moment, so I hope her stuff gets snapped up), someone selling lingerie, a friend with Miglio jewellery and Faithwear clothing and a children's home selling donated wine, photo albums and other bits and bobs (also hope they do especially well).

I was hoping for more crafters / sellers, but I think we'll have a nice range anyway, although there's not much to cater for men's presents. Once again, in a shameless plug... if anyone's keen to come, either to sell or to browse, please mail me at doodlesofajourno dot gmail dot com.

I haven't forgotten that I promised pics of the jewellery. I just need to recharge my camera battery after snapping away at the carols evening.

My head is definitely in Christmas space. I've done about half of the gift shopping. Unfortunately, that was the cheaper half. I have to wait to make some money with the jewellery sales before I can buy TSC and my parents' presents. But almost everyone else is done. I'm looking forward to next week's life group, although it's the final one for the year. We are having a bring and braai social and will do the annual present swap game, which is great fun and totally hilarious. If you're having a large gathering, it's definitely a good ice breaker.

The mad gift swap game

Each person has to bring a wrapped unisex gift costing no more than a certain amount. We've said R50 for our life group (the fact that it has to be suitable for a guy or a girl makes it challenging). Loads of people do boring presents like boxes of chocolates, but there are always some awesome and strange gifts. Last year someone brought a mini basketball hoop with a squishy little basketball. The girls all thought it was ridiculous, but the boys were ready to fight for it!

Everyone then sits in a circle, with the gifts in the middle. The person organising (and refereeing!) counts how many people there are and writes out the numbers on scraps of paper. So if there are 15 people, I'll write out 1, 2, 3... all the way up to 15. The paper scraps then get put in a hat / bowl / whatever and each person draws a number.

Whomever draws number 1 gets to pick and unwrap a present from the pile. The person with number 2 on his / her piece of paper can then either choose another present or steal number 1's gift. If he does the latter, number one gets to pick a new gift.

Then it's number 3's turn. He/she can either steal number 1 or number 2's gift or choose a new present from the pile. The game carries on like this until everyone has had a turn.

The interesting twist is that each gift can only be stolen three times. So the third person to steal it will get to keep it. It gets quite entertaining trying to remember how many times a particular gift has been stolen. And it's always a good idea to have some extra gifts on hand in case someone has forgotten to bring one.

Anyone else have suggestions for party games with a Christmas theme we could try with our group?