Silent Party

During this party, talking is strictly prohibited. It is great for making your mute friends feel included. Normally, everyone would be talking and your mute friends would be excluded. Not any more! Now everyone will be not talking together.

A party in complete silence could be too discomforting for some of your guests. Thus, it is encouraged that you have soft music playing in the background to fill the audio void. This will make many of your guests a little more comfortable. However, don't play the music too loud or some guests will try to use the music as a cover for their whispers. Music should be loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to cover up any unwelcome talking. Also, music should be instrumental only. Try finding minus tracks to popular songs or just stick to the basics like Chopin and Tchaikovsky. 

In order to encourage socializing, guests should wear signs with their cell phone numbers around their necks. This way people can initiate conversation via text. This is great for shy flirts who do not want to be spotted flirting. You can either have your guests put their phones on vibrate or allow ringtones. It is up to you as the host to determine how much silence you would like at your party.

Guests who refuse to comply to the silence rules of this party should be given a silent warning either through a stern look or a text. If guests continue to refuse to be silent, they should be removed from the party. Having a large but silent bouncer would be a good idea.

For any party, it is important to consider food. Some foods, such as pretzels and hard shell tacos, can be quite noisy when eaten. It is best to choose soft foods such as pudding and bananas. However, be careful that the foods you choose do not have noisy wrappers or require utensils that will scrape across plates or bowls. Also, avoid serving carbonated beverages as these tend to fizz when opened.

Some people believe you can't have fun without noise. After this party, they'll be changing the tune (to silence).

Fried Day Night Party

What party that begins with a pun as clever as this could be a bad idea?

This party must be held on a Friday night or it's confusing.

Basically, the host of this party gets a deep fryer or a huge pot full of oil and some batter. Then the host encourages guests to bring any food they want fried, but to bring enough to share. Guests could bring chicken, oreos, twinkies, pickles, squash, zucchini or anything else that can be fried. And since anything can be fried, the possibilities are endless.

While the host fries, people should be mingling and enjoying each other's company. There should also be some kind of fizzy drink, like soda that is available to the guests. But this soda should be served in champagne or wine glasses to try to add class to what is essentially a classless party. Or you could go the opposite way and go completely classless and serve cans of soda that are stored in a dirty, old cooler.

In addition, the host should also keep track of what his or her guests brought to fry and then offer a prize to some guests. Prizes could include the following: most creative thing to fry, most tasty thing to fry, grossest thing to fry, hardest thing to fry, etc.

Cheerio's party

The Cheerio party is a great way to be creative on a budget.  This party is themed around a simple and fairly cheap oat-based cereal.

Every guest brings a different cheerio-based treat.  Some examples might be rice krispie treats with cheerios instead of rice krispies, or a chex-mix style party mix with cheerios instead of chex mix.  Or even just cheerios with milk and bananas.  The sky is the limit when it comes to elaborating a cheerio-based dish, really.

For party activities, you can do some crafts using cheerios, such as making garlands or pasting them onto construction paper to make pictures.  You can make a cheerio necklace, too.

For more ideas, or for a neat prize at the cheerio party, you could also consult this book.  

There is also a card game called cheerio.  It would therefore be appropriate to play at the cheerio themed party.  You could also play bingo with cheerios for markers.  

Also, anything surprising involving these cheerios would be a funny pun.

St Catherine's/ St Andrew's Day

This party is one that would be more popular among the YSA wards, especially at BYU.  However, any single young adult, or anyone with single friends, could throw one of these parties and have fun.

Both of these saint days have traditions involving single women finding husbands and getting married.  I will describe each Saint Day separately, with a few ideas on how to implement them for a party.

St. Catherine's Day:

St. Catherine was beheaded on November 25th in 305 AD in Alexandria by Emperor Maxaminus II.  In the tenth century, Nov. 25th became the day of commemoration for St. Catherine, and over the years, the day has become associated with various other saints named Catherine. 

One tradition for St. Catherine's is to dress up and go door to door asking for treats and presents (akin to Halloween).  Thus, a costume party with lots of treats and prizes would be appropriate.

Another tradition, mostly based in France, is for single women to pray for their future husbands.  The celebrations mostly surround women over 25 who aren't yet married (called Catherinettes).  They wear silly hats, in yellow and green, that their friends have made them.  Catherinettes often bond with each other, but are also offered meals by non-Catherinettes to console them.  The silly yellow and green hats would be appropriate if one chooses to go with a costume party. 

As an aside, St. Martin's Day on November 20th is a male alternative to St. Catherine's.

St. Andrew's Day:

St. Andrew's Day is a day when a woman is supposed to be able to magically divine who she will marry and when.  A few traditions for divining this are: pouring hot wax through a keyhole into water, drinking wine and chanting a spell, throwing a clog over one shoulder, sticking papers with potential husbands' names into dough and seeing which will float in water, and sticking names or sticks under the pillow while sleeping.  One last tradition is trying to see the future husband's face by candlelight in water at night.

These traditions may be slightly harder to implement in a casual manner than those of St. Catherine's, but that makes the party even more fun.  You can have a party that more or less experiments with each of these magical methods of foreseeing a future wedding for single women.  Other methods from outside of St. Andrew's Day could also be implemented.  For instance, if a married woman attends, it could be fun to throw a wedding bouquet and see who catches it.  Create your own traditions, as well.  The most important part is that you have fun and find a husband (at least that's what I hear most weeks at church).

Mothballs

The idea is simple and inspired by The Moth.

This party is best held in the winter time and in a room with a fireplace. Drinks such as Italian Sodas and/or sparkling ciders should be served. Small hor'doerves can also be served. These should be placed on a table like a buffet.

Guests are also required to wear the ugliest and oldest sweaters they can find. They should also be told to be prepared to tell a real-life story about a theme. For example, you could tell guests to come prepared to tell a story about Firsts or about Birds.

The living room should be well lit with all chairs facing the fireplace. (If you have no fireplace, just have them all facing the same direction.) When all or most guests have arrived, begin the storytelling by standing in front of the fireplace and announcing that the storytelling will now begin. You should tell your own story first to break the ice. Then invite others to come tell their stories. If no one volunteers, begin chanting someone's name to encourage them to go up to the front.

After everyone who is willing has shared their stories, guests should vote for their favorite stories. Once all votes have been cast, guests can mingle while you count the votes. After the votes are counted, announce the winter and give the winner a great prize such as a pie or a box of mothballs.

Avocado party

The Avocado themed party is pretty self explanatory.

Dress in Avocado green. Dress up like a lawyer (french joke). Serve avocado in every way you can think of.

Everyone brings either 1. an avocado based dish or 2. an avocado.

You don't need to play games because everyone will be too busy eating:

-avocado shakes

-avocado pound cake

-guacamole

-avocado chocolate cake

-avocado tomato sandwiches

-all things avocado

Abstract Nouns Party

Before I begin his party's description, I must define abstract noun.

Abstract Noun: states, events, qualities, etc., that have no physical existence.

This party is a costume party that requires a sound knowledge of grammar and a robust vocabulary. For this party, people should come dressed as abstract nouns. It must be emphasized that dressing as a concrete noun that embodies the abstract noun is inadvisable. Guests should dress as the noun itself. For example, if a guest is to dress as honesty, the guest should not come dressed as Abraham Lincoln. The guest should formulate some costume that would be what honesty looked like if you could see actual honesty.

As with any party, you first have to invite people. People should be invited well in advance so they have time to plan their costumes. Many of the less creative/more uptight guests may have trouble with this. As you decide when to send the invitations, keep these people in mind.

How you do the invitations depends on how you do the costumes. You can either decide to assign the attendees the abstract nouns or let them pick their own abstract nouns. If you are assigning nouns, send out an invitation that explains the concept of the party and ask them to RSVP. Let them know that once you receive their RSVP's, you will send them a notice telling them what abstract noun they are to dress as. Be careful to avoid doubling assignments. Another idea is to send an assignment with every invitation. Then you would not have to bother with RSVP's. If you are not assigning nouns, you can just send an invitation explaining the concept of the party to all those you plan to invite.

Once people arrive at the party, you can do anything you want: mix and mingle, BBQ, give awards, play games where people have to guess everyone's costumes, dance, etc. Because foods are not abstract, it may be difficult to theme your foods. However, it may be nice to decorate any sweets by writing abstract nouns on them. Also, somewhat formless or wiggly foods, like noodles and jello, seem oddly appropriate for this party.

If music is playing at the party, it would be a clever touch to play only songs that have abstract nouns in the title. This should be easy. However, you must be careful because nouns such as love and hate can also be verbs. You must be careful that no songs using abstract nouns as verbs appear on your playlist. This would be a detail no one would notice but you, but it would be satisfying to know you pulled all the stops.