I wanted this office party to be an "Italian Cruise" themed one.  I created this three window wide cruise ship (each panel was 37" x 72").  These windows are right by the office check-in desk.  Party goers were each issued a games card to record their scores.  I have several stand-alone sign posts to give directions for various things.

                                     Here is an example of the one by check-in.

This opening into the conference room was the "gangplank" leading into the buffet area. I ordered Italian food from a local catering company, and it included waiters and waittresses.

I always have MANY Christmas trees in the office.  The one in this room is not shown in the photo.

I used red and white bows with silver and gold balls to accent my tree. Here by the seating area were four panels of the Almalphi coast I created.  My hubby says these were his all-time favorite ones.  I will post the actual posters below.

                 The ship needs a pool deck, so we used the building's lobby space to do this. If you follow me, you've seen my river rugs many times.  Here they are as a pool.  I placed a shark in the pool and a net.  Each of my beach chairs had a nerf gun and balls to try to shoot at the shark.  Yes, the large nerf balls went through the net.  Notice the umbrella and life guard chair.  We added the life guard's sweatshirt to the back of the chair.

Behind the pool, in the hall running 90 degrees, was a mamma flammingo.  I put 6 small

stuffed baby flamingos in a 12" square painting canvas. I velcroed this to a gym scooter.

With a mop handle and the soft side of velco to save the floor, the object was to push the babies to the mom under three pvc stands like the one above.  You got three chances to

get all six babies to their mom.  If one or two fell off, you could put them back on a start

again.  This was VERY popular.

Across from Flamingo Game was Tante's Farm Game.  A wolf was trying to get at her

border collie and farm goat.  Here was target practice to get at the wolf. The target was

a poster stand I bought on Amazon.  I bought wooden hoops and hook and looped them to the stand.

An easy fishing game.  I bought a child's wooden fishing pole on Etsy.  It has a hook at the end.  I bought half circle metal rings on Amazon and sewed them to about a dozen

stuffed fish.  This was a timed event.  Any simple game timed makes it fun for adults.

I made a kitchen stove out of black foam core from Michael's.  I found metal food warmers at a discount store and used them as burners.  I bought two big pots, heating pads, salt and pepper, even a paper towel holder, and two sets of tongs.  The object was to get the lobsters, and/or veggies into the pots.  The winner won the whole game.

 

 Since it was Italy, I brought out my precious hand crafted with that hangs on a broom (not pictured).  She played La Befana.  She had turned something into frogs.  It was a basic toss, but very popular.  The frogs and targets ended up in an employees' wife's pre-school. The targets were cheap wooden disks I painted green.

Above are enlarged chefs by the tossing game.

There is usually a game just for employees the week before the party. Since the Almalphi Coast grows a LOT of lemons, I had LOTS of lemons in all eight of the office ficus trees.  I also bought a TON of soft white large lemons on AMAZON.  The adult trikes came out of storage. I added baskets.  The employees had to race down the "coast" and back tossing lemons at targets.  Much fun ensued.

Here is the office kitchen area they raced towards.  I placed a small thin tree for them to go around on their trikes. ( Not my first time doing this). You can see more of the coast villages on the back windows.  You can also see Grandma's (Nana's) blown-up poster with the wolf.

She is in her garden.  I enlarged garden items and pests as targets for the disc guns you see in the photo above on the bar.  These shot disks RAPIDLY, so I had a broom and dust pan there to sweep them up for the next contestants.  I head a LOT of laughter at this game.

Here is sample of another one of the signs with directions for the game that was up by the pool.

Here are the babies in their "sled." You can also see the mop handles and my collection of "shooters."

Finally, we also had a dessert competition.  The partners and their wives all gathered in another of the conference rooms (with Christmas Italian decorations) and read and tasted all of the entrees.  Yes, I said read.  Part of the competition was to describe your Italian themed desserts.  You got points for doing so.  You got points for theme.  You got points for presentations.  You got points for taste.  With ten judges, we had a great time with the FABULOUS desserts these talents architects in interior designers presented. The top prize was $500, so they go out in their efforts.

 

 

Tour de France Party Games

here

Tour de France Office Party

I chose the theme for the Christmas Party because of these trikes.  They are adult sized.
We have used them many times, so they were worth every penny.  I added baskets this
year and filled them with things you could throw along the Tour de France "route."

We have a large chart with the staff's names on it.  The staff were split into 4 teams by
lottery.  The assignments and speed charts were posted in the main lobby.  They were also given color coded badges, a booklet of game tickets, and a baggie with paper gambling chips as they checked into the party.

In a previous blog I posted the posters to show you how I set the theme.  They can be seen
here.
The fresh greenery wreaths have not been added to the centerpieces.  I loved how the
green market umbrellas made the area cosy.  I used vinyl tablecloths at parties in order to reuse them in the future.  I rent tablecloths for our largest fall/client party, though.

Above are two of the tossing stations along the tour.  I always bring "Santa's dogs" to each party and give them a task.  Each stop had a cardboard street lamp  to which I added a pole with game directions.  I also added a bow for more holiday favor.  The photo with the dalmation  show the water bottle recycling station.  (They just had to toss empty plastic bottle into the can.  Easier said than done when you are riding past on a timed event.)  Along the way you saw Santa (of course) on a bicycle with another of his dogs with his feeding dish and plastic bones.

The tour went down the main (and very long) hall of the office, turned a curve into the kitchen area (which is large), went around a Christmas tree, and repeated this back to the main hall and office lobby.  I labeled the kitchen area PROVENCE.  Ratatouille was in there with his pots and stove.  He was making frog legs.  You picked up your frogs on the
way by, and then threw them back in the pot on the way back.  You had passed by the chicken and the fox area where you had been required to throw rubber eggs and a chicken into the chicken nests.

Here is a bird's eye view of the basket.  This event was very popular AND hard to do.  I always give the staff a few days ahead of the party to practice as there are fairly large cash prizes for the winners.

For those not wanting to ride the trikes, there are chances to play games that are not along the route.  Here is my sheep farmer.  There were black buckets behind each sheep you had to toss balls into.  There was also a goose in a hay wagon.  I had large rubber balls at another spot with bigger buckets.  I bought a cardboard standup tree.  You had to bounce the ball against the tree in just the right spot to make it land in the bucket.

                                       For the kiddies, I had more bone tossing.

                                      I also had a cat house in the Cafe de Chat area.  See the
mice on the shelf.  You had to get them in the holes of the house.  Not easy, but fun.
I also had gambling (not real but using paper dots).  The spinners were part of that.

We pretended the route went back to Paris, where our gambling cafe with food buffet was located (conference room).  On the table with Santa were large plastic envelopes I use for my family parties.  I used them to make eight roulette boards.  I loaded an app on my ipad labeled "Number Roulette Wheel."  Guests could simply press the screen to make the wheel turn.  The boards were designed with only 25 squares.  In the picture below,
you see the game called "Dice."  It comes with TEN sets of different colored die.  I put them in my bowls I use at lots of parties.  I used my condiment server to put the three different colors of dots (yellow= 1 point, blue=5 points, red= 10 points).  The guests could make their own "change" or "wins" from the dots in the baggie they received at check-in.
Everyone sat by the bowl and someone  (leader of round) yelled a number from 1-6.  The winner was the person who had all of their die rolled to that number.  You could also bet
on any other person at the table.  These two games were very popular.

In the building's lobby, I had one more tossing game and skiing in the French Alps.  My wooden three-man rope skis came back out and teams competed against each other.

At the end of the evening, I drew raffle tickets from each game and the gambling area.
Friends and family of staff also not only earned points for their staff member in the bike race, but raffle tickets for playing that also.  A winning team was chosen with a special prize.  The other raffle tickets were awarded wins to go to the huge prize table I set up every year.

There were also guests in the Provence BAKERY. See the black and white striped pie boxes.  I adjusted my boat box down to make these.  It made serving the pie "easy peezy".
We have a Wegmans by us with a fabulous bakery.  Their gingerbread men are to die for.
I served carrot cake from a restaurant, cream puffs from Costco, can cake pops and a cake log I made from scratch.

Of course our big tree and Santa were there, along with a live band "Irresponsible." My daughter does photo shoots for live bands and gets them for us at family/friend rates.
These bands are getting more and more famous as the years go by, even doing international tours.  I feel sooooooooooo lucky to have them come play for us.  On that note I am closing.