IKEA dinner party

For Christmas my family gave us a "Bathroom Reader" Book. I am not a bathroom reader. However, I was taking a bath recently and opened the book and began reading. It is a random book with crazy stories about people in the US. I read about a man in Sacramento who hosts an IKEA dinner party each year. He invites a bunch of his friends and they dress up, eat dinner in the cafe and then play board games on the showroom floor. I thought this was a brilliant and fun idea that I could easily do. I made a few changes and made it my own.
The hosts:


I first started out with some invitations. I made the IKEA logo on Illustrator. I added the Swedish words "You are hereby invited to.. (thanks to my Swedish brother in law Mats) and I designed a simple Swedish invite. I printed it on magnet paper so people could easily remember the party day and time while glancing at it every time they opened the refrigerator. I used the IKEA catalog to make envelopes for the invites and printed the IKEA logo on sticker paper to make stickers.


The instructions were to meet at the IKEA cafe at 6:00 dressed up and with a hat on. Rick and I got to IKEA early to set up our tables. We had 10 couples RSVP yes so we had 20 people. We put white table clothes down cute blue paper napkins that we bought at IKEA and 10 bottles of Kristian Regale Swedish Sparkling Pear, Lingonberry and Apple Cider (purchased from IKEA).







Once people started arriving, we got in line and ordered dinner. It was a lovely time. Towards the end of dinner I passed out envelope bags that had instructions and games pieces. The first game we played was called Noah's Ark. Each person had an animal name in their bag. Everyone spread out on the top showroom floor and had to find their animal mate by acting out their animal. No talking or noises were allowed. Once they thought they found their mate they had to report to Rick or I to see if they were correct. The second game we played was IKEA Bingo. I made IKEA Bingo cards with random squares such as - Lived outside the US, played in a band, or wore lingerie in the last week. Everyone wandered the showroom floor looking for people to fill in their squares. This was a good way to get to know each other. Once the Bingo game was over we divided into 3 groups and each group found a showroom to play games. One group played pass the pigs, another played Yahtzee, and the third played BS. The first few games people didn't necessarily know we were playing games. However, once we seperated into groups and found a showroom to play in people we smiling and asking questions.













Once the games were over we all headed downstairs for dessert. Rick stood in line and ordered 20 ice cream cones and 6 chocolate bars (for the winners of the games). The lady looked at him and said "Sir you need help". Not sure if she meant mentally or physically but it was still funny. They passed out ice cream cones to the group and we all added our own sprinkles (which I brought) just for fun.



It was a fun night and I loved that everyone dressed up in their own way and wore hats. Thanks for playing everyone.

The whole gang!