31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #5—Throw a Good, Old-fashioned Crappy Movie Night / Handmade Crappy Card Contest

This Friday's Awesome Thing will be a reprise of last year's Thing #24, "Host a Teetotaler's Drinking Party," so this year's Thing #5 incorporated the making of handmade invitations for said Mocktail Party. We also combined it with a movie night, complete with terrible-idea treats and a film that (a) requires no deep or critical thinking and (b) stars Barbra Streisand. As it turns out, The Guilt Trip is a guilty pleasure film that is legitimately pleasurable. We highly enjoyed ourselves. Thanks Mom and Dad Grover for letting us blow $4.99 on this Pay-Per-View purchase.

(We had about ten potential awesome things planned for today, but David was still finishing up his final projects due this evening, and I ended up taking a huge, unplanned nap in the late afternoon, etc. etc. Mary actually came up with this awesome idea for tonight, and we are very grateful for her. Otherwise, you would have had to read me blog about the awesome thing we did by going to bed at a reasonable hour.)

Nothing says "let's get the party started" like a handful of goldfish mixed into your microwaved popcorn.

It doesn't get much more awesome than a table pulled in front of the television covered with Red Baron pizza and scrapbook paper. It literally took me back to at least five different sleepover parties I participated in as a young girl living on the Wasatch Front. Seriously. 

This is to show my sister-in-law Rachel that we also ate Magnum treats (her favorite). They were oh-so-delicious and much less "mini" than we had anticipated. 

Dave, Mary, and I only had until the end of the film to create our invitations. It was a super important contest, and only one of us could be the winner. Here are the results:

From left to right: Mary's card, my card, and Dave's card.

Competitor A: Emily's card [front view]

Competitor A: Emily's card [inside view]

Competitor B: David's card [front view]

Competitor B: Dave's card [inside view—in case you can't tell, David made a pop-up card....the highball glass pops up]

Competitor C: Mary's card [inside view—the theme was "CLUE"]

As the credits rolled, the judges discussed the strengths of each card and reached their verdicts. Unfortunately, the judges were also the competitors, and everyone just voted for their own card, so it was a three-way split. The reward was just more Magnum minis so everyone is going to bed happy.

We're still not sure how we are actually going to deliver these invitations to their various recipients, nor did we ever decide on a specific time this Friday or whether people need to bring their own treats or drink mixins or not. So in terms of making actual invitations, this was a major fail. As for making AWESOME invitations? ACCOMPLISHED!

If any of my Houston relatives are reading this: y'all are invited to a Teetotalers' Mocktail Drinking Party this Friday night at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They won't be around, so you know this party is gon' be CRAY-CRAY! Also, you may or may not receive one of the above invitations in the mail between now and Friday. Just consider yourselves invited and put it on your calendar.