July 26, 2013

Super hero scavenger hunt

soundslikeknock Activities, DIY, Events avengers, batman, big daddy, comic con, herohunt, hitgirl, kick-ass, marvel, sailor moon, scavenger hunt, super hero, theme party, wonder women 13 Comments

Some of you may remember the super hero party I threw last year for the bf’s birthday. It was a huge success so I had a few friends request that I throw another one. The best thing about already setting a precedence is that no one complained this year about my strict costumes mandatory rule. Instead, they all realized that the more outrageous the costume, the cooler everyone else thought you were. I was so pumped that people went all out on their costumes this year!

To spice things up a little bit, I kicked off the party with a photo scavenger hunt. I made a fun list of things to do, and gave everyone 1 hour to complete as many of the listed items as possible. Although some people were unsure about running around the city in their costumes, by the end of it, everyone had a blast, and now they have all these great photos to show for it. Feel free to download my list for your own party!

Benefits of a photo scavenger hunt

Great way for people to get to know each other. I made teams at random which forced people to work together with others that they might not normally talk to
Everyone has a competitive edge. And a hunt is a great way to bring that out in people.
Great photos! I’m all for photos and giving people a list to do gives them a reason to be silly in pictures.
It’s fun being a kid. We don’t give enough credit to just doing fun, silly, PG13 kind of activities.

Tips tricks and lessons learned from the scavenger hunt:

Give a wide range of tasks in varying difficulties
Teams of 4 worked really well – the teams are small enough to easily coordinate and work together, while being big enough that people know that you’re part of a group you’re not a random crazy person walking around the streets in a costume.
I gave everyone an hour to complete the list and 2 teams finished all 26 tasks. Next time I’d add probably put at least 30 things on the list with some really hard ones
Remember to print off the list beforehand. I was rushed the day of and couldn’t get to a printer in time. Luckily, everyone has smart phones now a days so I just posted it online and had everything download the list to their phones.
Picking a hashtag lets everyone post to the same social media channels so they can see how their competition is doing. We used #HeroHunt for ours.
If you plan ahead and are tech savy, you can collect everyone’s photos and play a slideshow of all the pictures during the party

Some pictures from the hunt!

It’s not every day that you get to party with Sailor Moon and Wonder Woman!

female super hero costume

Or how about Super Dave and Asbestos lady? Super dave costume

And of course the whole crew from Kick-ass decided to join! Kick-ass in toronto costume ideas

Did I mention that I live in Gothum City?

dark knight and bane costumes

Thanks to Heather from Shameless Vanilla for making these awesome cupcakes!

August 1, 2012

Super heroes party

soundslikeknock Activities, DIY, Events avengers, costume ideas, costume party, marvel, super heroes, theme parties 6 Comments

ngoc nguyen dressed as Thor for Avenger's premiere For some reason, people assume I’m really into comic books and that fan expo and comic cons are right up my alley. Maybe it’s because I had been looking forward to the Avengers for half a year. Or maybe it’s because I dressed up like Thor to go see it. (I unfortunately couldn’t get tickets to opening night, so had to wear my costume to the Sunday, 3pm showing… someone high five’d me.. which means I was cool… right?). Whatever their reasons are, I always thought the bf knew me better than that. Until I opened up my birthday present to find a Thor hammer and Captain America Shield. At least he was trying to be creative.

Well that’s when the idea of a super hero theme party came about. I mean, I had to find a use for my newly acquired treasures, right?

I love love love theme parties but since I’ve never thrown one for this particular group of friends, I was met with much skepticism. Because of this, I wanted to make sure I set the mood so that the next time I had a theme party, everyone would be pumped instead of weary.

A few tips:

1. I made it a costumes mandatory party. No costumes, no entry. If you are going to enforce this though, be concious of the fact that some people may opt not to come because they are too shy or feel like it’s silly to dress up. I requested at a minimum, people wear a mask or a cape. Give some suggestions of easy costume ideas to help get the creative juices flowing.

2. Advance notice. Let people know well a head of time so that they can go buy or make their costumes. This also prevented people from telling me that they didn’t have “time” to get a costume. I also offered to assist those less creative folk and I had made a few extra masks and capes for those who really struggled.

3. Movie posters. As a photographer, I firmly believe that people love photographs. I googled popular super hero movies and super imposed the faces of the guest list onto the photos (facebook has made it super easy to get photos of your friends). I put up a photo collage right near the entrance so people could have a little chuckle as they entered the party. I must admit, putting my male friend’s faces on beautiful 6 packs was maybe a little bit more enjoyable than it should have been.

4. Photo back drop. I taped craft paper together to form a giant back drop and bought acrylic paint to paint a fun and colourful backdrop. If you are going to do this, make sure you start well in advance as it took a surprisingly long time to paint and to wait for the paint to dry so I could outline all the letters. I also made a mug shot back drop and bought a small white board so people could write down their super hero name to make it look more legit. Guests had a lot of fun posing and acting out fight scenes all night.

5. Since it was a birthday party, I had to have some themed cupcakes and cakes. This is actually an older cake from a previous birthday but it would have suited this party perfectly. I unfortunately don’t have any photos of the cupcakes from this party.

The guests all had a great time and I’m confident that they’ll be less weary of dressing up for my next theme party.