Input requested: Valentine's ideas
I'm searching for some good "party" games and activities for our Church Sweetheart Banquet. We do this annually and I'm running out of fresh ideas, thought you might be able to help! This will be for a large group of married couples. Thanks for any help! -AprilSince I've never hosted a Sweetheart Banquet, I'd love to hear input from readers on this. I'm also looking for ideas for a Valentine's dinner I am planning on doing for our family. I want to make it special just to show them how much I love them. I have some ideas, but more would be appreciated. I am not naturally an extremely creative person so any recipes with a Valentine's theme, table decorations, or any other ideas would be most helpful. And maybe it might spark an idea for someone else here as well!
posted by Crystal Paine at 5:05 PM
20 Comments:
I'm not very creative either, but Mrs. Wilt has a pretty Valentine's topiary on her blog--complete with instructions, of course! It looks simple enough, and I don't think it would be expensive to make. :)
Well, this year I was planning on cutting out a bunch of hearts and taping them up on the wall. Each heart has something about my husband that I love about him. I am decorating our bedroom with these hearts. The children's room is being decorated with hearts, each has the child's name on it and what I love about them. Thankfully my children are heavy sleepers so I can do this while they are sleeping and they will wake up to a room full of hearts! You can do this with the dining room too!
Fun games for couples: each couple that comes in has a famous couple taped to their back (Romeo and Juliet; Anthony and Cleopatra; Mary and Jospeh; Rachel and Issac; Bonny and Clyde; etc.). Throughout the dinner they ask questions to others about who they might be "Are we a couple from the Bible?" "Are we from a book?" etc. Then they have to guess who they are.
Decorations for the table: HEARTS! Each cut up tiny heart would have a question on the back OR a statement about how much you love so and so. Throughout the dinner, have the person pick a heart and read the statement or question.
I was going to wait until Saturday to share this on my blog (every Saturday is Saturday Sweethearts with ideas for romancing your husband), but I will share now. :)
I've never done a banquet either. I am helping with a school party and got ideas from books I checked out at the library. We make Valentine's day a family affair at our house. Prior to the day, I hand out construction paper in red, white, and pink. The kids can cut out paper hearts out of two colors. They then glue them onto the third sheet. They can also use finger paints, crayons, markers, and stickers to decorate these sheets. I then seal them with contact paper. We use these as place mats for dinner. I bought a white tablecloth with a flower print (also white) on clearance at WalMart for $3. I use this on the table. I went to the Dollar Tree and bought Valentine's Day garland that I will lay down the center of the table. If I tape down the ends of the garland, the wire holds its shape beautifully. I use crystal candle holders we got for our wedding to "dress" the table. For our centerpiece, I either use a heart shaped candle (dollar section at Target) with heart confetti around it or a small crystal bowl filled with rose petals and floating candles. I also use my good china and flatware. Bergner's (also Carson Pierrie Scott or Boston Store) has a beverage fountain marked down from $75 to $18 for bigger events this may be a nice touch. For dinner, I make either roast, turkey, or chicken breasts (oven fried). I use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut bread for bread and butter. I also use it to cut cranberry sauce. If you can stomach it, I make mashed potatoes with a drop of food coloring to turn them pink or red. For beverages, sparkling grape juice in dollar store wine glasses looks very pretty. I went to Michael's this year and bought a heart shaped cookie tray for $5. I am taking cookie dough and pressing it into the tray to make a giant heart shaped cookie. I then use frosting to pipe on "I love you" or something similar. Finally, at each place setting, I lay a flower with a note tied on with ribbon telling that person why I love them. We all dress up for dinner, then get jammies on after dessert and watch the Charlie Brown Valentine's movie. In the past, we have also done follow the confetti trail to find your Valentine game. We decorate the house with Valentine theme pictures the kids have colored, paintings, drawings, and cutouts. Another idea I like is making big hearts with construction paper and hanging them throughout the house. Adding a magnet to the back means I can stick them on the back of our door, on the file cabinet, the freezer, the fridge. On these hearts, I print scriptures on them that refer to Love from a biblical perspective. Pretty (especially with a doily underneath), festive, and an easy way to memorize scripture for the month. Good luck with your planning Crystal!
I went to a lovely sweetheart banquet a few years ago at my church. One of the fun things we did was sit with a different couple for each course of the meal. The fellowship hall was set up in tables of 4. After each course you and your mate took your drink and silverware to a different table. Then each course was served (by high school youth group members) along with some kind of conversation starter: where did you go on your first date, what is your favorite "cheap" date, what is a special thing your spouse does to show his/her love, etc.
It was a nice way to get to know other couples and provided some thought-provoking sparks in my own marriage!
You could play a game where there are, say, 5 women in a row (or men, either or), and the spouses (one at a time) go down the line blindfolded, and they need to guess which their spouse is by feeling the hands or the face. That always gets a giggle. You could have everyone bring baby pictures of themselves, (un-named)and people need to put the right baby spouses together. You could have those on a pin board, and during the night people can go up and swap things around until the end of the night when the correct answers are given by the couples going up and saying if the duos are correct or not. (obviously, you can't put your own pictures together until the end.) People could bring in their favourite gift their spouse has given them (make sure it is practical... not bbq's or anything ;}) and have them all on a table and people need to go put them on a picture of the right person on a nother table. You could do this as a race against the clock... everyone has five minutes, for example, to put things where they belong, but shakes of the head and nods are forbidden, as are the words yes and no, and you can't intimate that the item is yours, so people have to work it out, and if the item is yours, you must join in with commets that aren't too obvious. (if that sounds complicated, let me know... I'm making this up on the spot!)
One game we played was like a game show. We had 2 couples as the contestants. The wives would sit at the table with the husbands standing behind them. The host would ask a question, like how did they meet, what did they do for their first date, etc.
The person sitting at the table would answer, but the person behind had a dry erase board and could prompt the audience to ask questions about the answer. Like "ask about the cake" and we would find out that the wedding cake collapsed and her aunt and his cousin patched it all together.
After each of the couples answered the question, the audience would vote (with applause) for their favorite story and would win a simple prize.
The couples would swap places and answer more questions or more couples would come forward.
It was a fun way to get know each other better.
The Valentines day features at old fashioned living have some really good ideas: http://www.oldfashionedliving.com/holidays/main.html
Blessings,
Bethany
Hello Mrs. Wilt,
For our first Valentine's Day together as a married couple I'm giving my George a tower stack of heart shaped frosted sugar cookies wrapped up pretty. Included with this will be a special letter telling him how he means to me.
blessings,
Trixie
Not sure if favors for couples are being sought(or if this fits the budget if so) but "A Christian Love Story" by Zola Levitt is beautifully written and is often a favor at bridal showers, wedding receptions, and parties with a love theme.
http://store.levitt.com/cgi-bin/perlshop.cgi?ACTION=ENTER&thispage=study.html&ORDER_ID=!ORDERID!#SFI
How about a "not-so-newly" wed game? That could be really fun!
Crystal-
I'm enjoying your blog. Have lurked here for some time...being encouraged and refreshed. Come visit me and mine over at Happyhelms.com. You can see who it is that is spying on you!
Maryanne Helms
Crystal,
Thank you so much for posting my request! I’d like to give some ideas that we’ve done for past Sweetheart Banquets.
*Ahead of time, have each couple bring baby photos of themselves. Display the photos on a wall, and have people match the married couples from all of the baby photos.
*Ahead of time, had each couple bring a wedding photo and displayed them on a wall. Let everyone guess who was who in the photos.
*Pick 2-3 couples. Give them little plastic kazoos found in children’s party section at the store. Have one spouse play a song on the kazoo and the other spouse must guess the song. We used hymns from our church hymnal that used the word “Love” (ex: Love Lifted Me, Jesus Loves Me, etc)
*Give each couple a paper and pen. Have them write a short description of their first kiss. We had a lot of people (about 150) so we read thru them, picked out the best five stories and read them aloud. The audience cheered for the best story.
*Name that tune with oldies love songs. Play the first few seconds of a song – have everyone guess.
*Make a list of Bible couples, mix them up and have people match the couples.
Thanks again!
April
www.faraboverubies31.blogspot.com
This is such a cheap idea- and we loved it at a recent church party. Buy a tube of red lipstick. Have each wife kiss a posterboard(preferably white). Number each kiss and write the corresponding woman's name on another sheet of paper. When the poster is full, display it and have the men guess who the lips belong to. We gave a prize to each husband that guessed his own wife's lips and a prize to the man who guessed the most correctly. To make it even more fun, a prize for the most clueless man would be funny too!
Last year my father died suddenly and unexpectedly Feb. 12th (my mil found him in bed already gone that morning), needless to say Valentine's day was not a major thought at that time, but decided I needed to try to do something for the kids. I made choclate fondue and let them dip fruit and marshmellows, etc to their hearts content. They still talk about it a year later! In fact my 8 year old recently wrote a paper on his favorite surprise and that was it!
Cut out bread hearts from bread slices with a heart cookie cutter and make French toast (using both parts).
Sounds like some fun games mentioned! This is kind of crazy, but I vaguely remember when I was about seven yrs old some game where the husbands stood behind this divider or something where you could only see their bare feet. The women had to guess which feet were her husband's.
I'm not sure about the banquet, but here's a shortened version of what we do in our home. Breakfast: heart pancakes, Lunch: heart-shaped sandwiches, Dinner: heart-shaped chicken parm. Goodies: heart-shaped cookies, brownies or heart-shaped cupcakes decorated w/valentines sprinkles. Little messages spread throughout the house.
Last year we stayed home and I made a three course dinner and spread it out over the course of the night. I had candles lit everywhere. My hubby's favorite was that I made him homade chocolate truffles(I used the Barefoot Contessas recipe from foodtv.com)and I put them in pretty tins. It was very romantic and fun. This year we are excited b/c our church's youth group is providing free baby-sitting at the church from 5-9 on V-day so we are going to a fancy resturant with 3 other couples. It is going to be a lot of fun.
I HOSTED MY CHURCH'S PARTY LAST YEAR I DID THE NEWLYWED GAME,I DID A GAME WHERE I CUT A BUNCH OF HEARTS OUT THEN CAME UP WITH A 10 OR SO COUPLES FROM THE BIBLE AND WROTE EACH NAME ON A HEART HID THEM ALL OVER THE CHURCH AND GAVE ABOUT 4 OR 5 MIN. FOR THE COUPLES TO FIND AS MANY HEARTS AS THEY COULD AND MATCH AS MANY OF THE BIBLE COUPLES TOGETHER BEFORE THE TIMER WENT OFF,I ALSO DID ONE WHERE PLACE A SHEET OF PAPER ON THE FLOOR ABOUT THE SIZE OF A SHEET OF NEWS PAPER TURN MUSIC ON AND EACH COUPLE HAS TO DANCE ON THERES AND IF THEY STEP OF THE PAPER THERE OUT AND TO MAKE IT EVEN HARDER YOU CAN STOP THE MUSIC EVERY 2 MIN. AND HAVE THEM FOLD THERE PAPER IN HALF HOPE SOME OF THESE HELP!
I MC a Valentines Dinner annually at our church.This is a favotire of mine.(make sure you chose a guys who can take a joke and not get mad.)
Have all the men who want to participiate line up in a row.Pick out one in advance that is a good sport.Tell them whoever peels and eats a banana first wins.But then you blindfold them all and have them put one hand behind their backs.Give them the sign to start eating,but stop all the men EXCEPT the one who the trick is being played on.All the women cheer on their guys and make it seem like all the guys are doing it.If you video this event,everyone gets a kick out of watching it too.
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