Grandpa's Farm Party

       

                                      

          After the pandemic, we held our first holiday party in December of 2021.  I wanted it to appear homespun after all that we had gone through.  I thought going back to Grandpa's Farm would be fitting.  In addition, I had a LOT of over-sized stuffed animals to use and then give away.

 I had already designed this farmhouse for another project, so it just needed to be reimagined.

       

These four panels were a first draft.  I am always on the hunt for great farm animal clipart.  See the ones further on for comparison.

  

Keep in mind that each poster is 34" wide by 72" tall.  These will fill up four windows in the office.  Meet grandma and grandpa below.

If you take note, the fence and grass have been updated, and the barn completed.

The above is the second sheep barn that was located in the office kitchen, with

a "Feed the Sheep" game.  I put an artificial grass rug under the posters with

a corn hole board.  I had glued three black buckets on it, which had various point values attached.  I bought felt food on Etsy, and added beans to each piece.

You can see from the size of the panels how big these are.  These

two panels were by two "cow" themed games.

This was an easy game to set up.  I already owned, and have used many times, the slotted white wood box.  I simply bought milk bottles on Amazon.  I already owned MANY many tossing rings, so this was simply a throw toss game.  Adding the cow (a prize) gave it more presence.

I also reused my game board with various holes in it that I use as a target for Nerf balls. I assigned clipart of flies to each hole, asking guests to help the

cows from the biting flies.  This is always a crowd favorite.

Since grandpa has cows, I decided to use a milk truck to post the rules

by each game. Each guest had a single sheet of paper with all of the ten games listed, and a column for their score at each game.  Then they totaled up their scores and submitted them for judging.  They went into a separate raffle box, the number of tickets awarded to a scale of all of the scores.

I bought an inexpensive wire cage at our local "used" shop, Luckett's. It has indoor/outdoor reworked furniture, etc. One of the stuffed animals came in a large box, so I used it to make the chicken coop.  This was a shuffleboard game using mop handles and lots of hook and loop tape.  Each colored opening on the bottom was a different point value.

This game was an Amazon purchase of curling.  The description was "There's more going on than the pigs' tails curling.  It is battery operated and was a good buy.  It was also given away, along with the pigs.

 

My pride and joy panels were Grandma's Kitchen.  I actually designed this kitchen to look like a 1950's farm one.  You see grandma sitting at the table during the break of making cookies.  This was placed in our second conference room for additional dining.  We had all of the monitors in the open spaces set to a burning log, so it was quite cosy.  The centerpiece was a large blue metal truck with toy baking pieces and a tree in it.

 

I created a General Store at Christmas time for the huge monitor in the main conference room. I used black and white gingham table clothes for most of the tables and matching ribbon bows on all of the Christmas trees.  Since we

had just come out of Covid lock-down, we had waiters and line barriers for

people to be served, so guests weren't going down a buffet line.  It worked perfectly.  I bought the stanchions on Amazon and have used them twice now.  (They will become a part of the gangplank for this years Cruise themed Christmas party.)

Above is a computer screen shot of the four panels that were also on the windows in the kitchen where the black and white cafe tables above were located.

 

Here are some of the animals waiting to be loaded in van to go to the party.

We use the building's lobby for games that need more space. Here is a screen shot from a movie of the archery target I made. The stand I got on Amazon is for holding display banners.  I just added plastic hoops with zip ties.

Here is another screen shot from movie of "The Goat in the Boat" game. See below for dog ring toss game I also got on Amazon. If you look in the background of the shot below, you will see the other standing target I built to fling artificial apples (softish) with my catapult guns.

I wanted to leave you with the panel with the red truck that I had to build from clipart pieces, since I couldn't find one at just this angle to fit in front of Grandpa's house.  Not only was this post covid party fun, but the staff and guests all loved taking home not only cash and prizes, but my beloved stuffed animals.  Since my hubby is nearing retirement, I have been slowly giving away a lot of the props.  I still have my favorites, like the dogs, donkey, and goats, but there era of farm props is over.  What's next?  New Orleans Margarita Party.  It's a good thing I saved my huge alligators.