Three Easy Potluck Themes for Your Next Work Party

Most of us can agree that generic potlucks are a safe and fun way of making sure there's enough food to eat at your next work event without having to break the bank. Still, this can get a bit boring sometimes.  

One way to liven things up is to give the meal a theme. This ensures that everyone still contributes to the meal by bringing an item to share, but adds some flavor to the proceedings. 

Here are three examples of easy potluck themes that might work for your next office party:

Sandwich Potluck - Most everyone loves sandwiches, and there's a huge variety of sandwich ingredients people can bring without having to put in too much effort.

What to ask people to bring:

• Bread (white/whole wheat/sour dough)
• Sandwich meats (chicken/turkey/ham/salami/roast beef)
• Cheese (swiss/cheddar/provolone)
• Veggies (lettuce/pickles/tomatoes/cucumber slices/avocado/onions)
• Condiments (mayonnaise/hummus/mustard)

To spice things up, bring some bacon for some BLT's. Most of these ingredients are relatively cheap and there's an almost endless variety of sandwiches you can make. Also, there's no cooking involved, a major plus! This theme is also great for summer events.

Salad Potluck - Here's another relatively easy one. You have a couple options here. One is to have everyone make their favorite salad and bring some in to share and the other is to have everyone bring in some salad ingredients, allowing folks to create their own personalized salads from the variety of ingredients provided by their coworkers.

What to ask people to bring:

• Some leafy veggies (lettuce/spinach/kale)
• Salad Dressing
• Veggies (tomatoes/black olives/avocado/sprouts
• Croutons/bacon bits/other crunchies
• Some sort of protein to mix in (chicken strips/eggs/tofu/kidney beans)

Mexican Fiesta Potluck - Much like salads and sandwiches, burritos and tacos can be put together without too much cooking know-how. Some of the ingredients may need to be heated up in the microwave, but no actual cooking need be done at work to set up a taco/burrito station for your party.

What to ask people to bring:

• Tortillas
• Taco shells
• Cheese
• Ground beef
• Chicken
• Re-fried or black beans
• Corn
• Salsa
• Tortilla Chips
• Optional beverage: Horchata

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Coworker/Boss Gift Ideas

Stumped on what to get your coworker or boss for their birthday, Christmas, or some other occasion? You will need to do just a little bit of basic research on the coworker/boss in question in order to find a good gift.

• Do you know their hobbies, their passions? Is there something you can give the person that both fits your budget and that you can be pretty sure he or she will enjoy? If your boss is into photography, you can't go and buy him a new camera, for example. But if your coworker likes comedy, for example, buy her some tickets to the local comedy club. If your boss is a coffee or tea aficionado, you can probably safely buy him a variety pack of different flavors. Make sure you know a little bit about what you are buying, however, if your boss likes fine wine but you don't know the first thing about buying wine, either get some help from a third party with some knowledge on the subject.
• Is this coworker passionate about a particular cause or social issue?  Make a small donation to a cause you know he or she will appreciate, such as feeding the hungry or a no-kill animal shelter. Even if she or he doesn't love the gift, they can't show it without looking like a horrible human being that hates charity.
• Can you make anything? Make them a batch of cookies or brownies.  It doesn't cost too much money but the effort you made will come across and shows that you care.  Anyone can throw money at a problem, but spending your time to make something shows another level of caring.
• Is this person a complete blank slate of a human being who seems to lack any passion or personality whatsoever? Perhaps the person is very introverted and hard to get to know.  Well, you'll have to go with a safe choice like a gift card.  See if you can get a gift card or certificate for a local restaurant they like to go for lunch.
• You don't have to spend a ton of money to show that your care.  What's important is to show that you put a little bit of effort and thought into the purchase.

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What to Write in a Coworkers Baby Shower Card

Is someone in the office expecting a baby? Chances are that a congratulatory card is making its way around the office. If you aren't sure what to say, here are a couple generic stock phrases you can edit and use to suit the situation - 

• Congratulations on the new addition to your family! The next few years will be a magical time for you and your family so soak up every little bit of it!

• Wishing you the very best with the arrival of your new bundle of joy!

• Sending well wishes to you and your family as you wait for the arrival of your baby.

• Be sure to bring the little one by the office for a visit sometime, I can't wait to meet your new bundle of joy!

• I'm so excited for this new addition to your growing family!

• May you be blessed with a happy, healthy baby and many happy memories to come.

• Thank you for inviting us to share in the excitement of bringing your precious new child into the world, I am so excited and happy for you both.

Still need some inspiration for what to write?  Check out Quotes for Baby Shower Cards

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Inspirational Quotes for a Coworkers Retirement Card

Need a little inspiration for what to write in your coworkers retirement card? Look no further! Check out one of these nuggets of wisdom for a little help:

• "Retirement, a time to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, where you want to do it, and, how you want to do it." - Catherine Pulsifer 

• "Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." - Sir John Lubbock 

• "Retirement is a work in progress. I try to figure out my day, and what I know about myself is that I need structure." - Pete Sampras

• "I enjoyed retirement the right way... linguine con vongole, red wine and plenty of truffle cheese." - Craig Kilborn

• "If retirement means laying on a beach and rubbing coco butter on your stomach, about 48 hours of that will be enough for most people. You'll want something new." - Timothy Ferriss

• "I had a very detailed retirement plan, and I feel like I've met every aspect of it: a lot of golf, a lot of carbs, a lot of fried food, and some booze, occasionally - I've been completely committed...The results have shown." - Andy Roddick 

• "Remember, what does 'retirement' mean? It doesn't mean that you're a couch potato. Leisure is not the same thing as rest. If you're bicycling five miles a day, that's leisure, but it certainly takes a lot of effort." - Robert Fogel 

• "I tell people retirement isn't what you think. You are going to sit around and waste your life, you can only golf so much. To stay young, you have to stay in the mix." - Ron Rice 

• “But I'm really enjoying my retirement. I get to sleep in every day. I do crossword puzzles and eat cake.” - Derek Landy

• "There are so many other interesting ways to spend your time. I feel like early retirement is a gift, but it's such an incredible gift. It's a gift I need to use." -  Martha Felt-Bardon

Need some more ideas of what to write in someone's retirement card? Check out What to Write in a Coworkers Retirement Card

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White Elephant Gift Exchange Rules

The white elephant gift exchange game is a very entertaining game.  You are free to tinker with the rules as you see fit, but this is what has worked for me in the past: 

• Instruct each player to bring a fun gift to share for the game.  You can impose a maximum amount of money allowed to be spent, or even go as strict as to only allowing items that don't cost you any money. Have folks wrap their gift.  Hint: Sometimes the wrapping is a key ingredient! 
• Have everyone draw numbers out of a hat to determine the order for the opening of gifts.
• Each player may use his or her turn to either open an unwrapped gift OR take an already opened gift from another player, who then gets to choose a new unopened gift, after which the turn is passed to the next player.
• It's usually best to limit the number of times an opened item can be stolen.  A three theft maximum per gift has worked well for me.

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Three Easy and Quick Ice Breaker Games for Your Next Meeting

Three Quick and Easy Ice Breakers:

Two Lies and a Truth

Tell your participants to think of a life experience or personal fact that might surprise or interest others, then ask them to think of 2 fictional/made up stories as well. Have each participant share his or her 3 items with the group and have them try to guess which one of the three statements is true.

Three Island Essentials
This is a really easy one that can still provide interesting answers. Present the hypothetical question to the group - If you were to be shipwrecked, marooned or otherwise trapped on an otherwise uninhabited island, what 3 essential things would you want to have with you?  Give everyone a moment to mull it over and then go around the world with everyone sharing their answer.

Word Finder Teams
Divide your participants into several smaller teams. Make sure each group has a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Write the word "interactive" on a flip chart.  Ask the teams to come up with as many words as possible from the word.  After the five minutes is up, the group with the most words wins. Candy prizes are encouraged for the victors. Depending on the topic of your meeting, a different source word can be used in this game, such as “vengeance"  or "fermentation" or whatever you can think of.

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Seven Easy and Fun Baby Shower Game Ideas for the Workplace

So you've decided to throw a pregnant friend at your work a baby shower, great!  Here are a few game ideas that should be pretty easy to prep for and don't require too much clean-up.

1.  Guess The Due Date: Get yourself a calendar and have your shower guests each place a guess as to when the baby will show up.  Have them include both the day and time they expect the little one to show up. For extra fun, you can have folks try to guess the baby's birth weight as well, giving you possibly two winners.

• Tips: You may or may not want to provide them with the estimated due date provided by the doctor, though as many of us know, rarely does the baby emerge into the world exactly as scheduled unless a C-section is involved, which renders this particular game unnecessary.  You can provide a small prize to the winner as an incentive to get everyone playing, perhaps a Starbucks gift card?
• Supplies: A calendar (preferably large enough for everyone to write on), pens. 2.

2.  Name That Baby: Okay, so you won't actually be naming the baby (unless the parent(s) really fall in love with a particular name suggestion), but it can be fun to see what names everyone can come up with. Take a big piece of paper, tape it to the wall, and have all your shower participants write down their favorite name for the baby.  there is no real winner for this game, but it's fun to see what people come up with. 

• Tips: If you know the gender of the baby and feel like sharing that info, that could work, but don't let folks know what names you might already be leaning towards.  
• Supplies: A sheet of poster-sized paper, tape, markers/pens.   

3.  Guess That Baby Food: For this game, buy some jars of strained baby food (approx. 5-10 jars) and have participants guess what the flavors of the various jars are based solely on what they look like, tasting is not allowed! Make sure to remove the labels before starting. Make an answer key for yourself and write a number on the jar lid with a permanent marker to keep track of what people are guessing on. This game can be trickier than it sounds as a lot of baby foods look very similar to each other.

• Supplies: Jars of baby food, permanent marker, answer key, small prize for the winner if you plan to keep track of the scores (optional).

4.  Baby Bottle Drinking Game: This is an easy one, just fill up some baby bottles with an alcoholic beverage of your choice and give them to the contestants.  On your mark, everyone starts drinking and the first person to finish her/his bottle wins! Note this game is probably not appropriate for the workplace...

5.  How Many Baby Products Can You Name?: Give each player a pen and piece of paper. Their goal will be to think up and write down as many baby-related products (pacifier, crib, cradle) as she/he can in 2 minutes (you can make this longer or shorter if you like). The person who names the most baby-themed items wins. You may need an unbiased third party to judge the answers just in case any of them are questionable.

6.  Don't Say "Baby": Before the shower gets started, give each person a safety pin to wear on her person. Instruct everyone that if anyone catches someone saying the word "baby", the sayer of the word is to give the caller her safety pin. If she has more than one, she only needs to hand over one safety pin for each time she says "baby". The winner of the game is person with the most safety pins at the end of the shower.

7.  Guess The Baby Animal Name: For this game, you will provide participants with a sheet of animals names. The goal of the game is for everyone to guess the baby name version for each animal.

Baby animal name template download link (.pdf format) - 
http://www.filedropper.com/babyanimaltemplate

Baby animal name template download link (.excel format) -
http://www.filedropper.com/babyanimaltemplate_1

• Tips: To make things easier, you can have players work in groups on this one.  You also might want to put a time limit on this game, maybe 3-5 minutes.  Also, forbid the use of smart phones on this game.
• Supplies: Download the baby animal name template here and grab some pens/pencils for folks to complete their sheets with.
• Answer Key:

1. Kangaroo - Joey
2. Grasshopper - Nymph
3. Goose - Gosling
4. Alligator - Hatchling
5. Duck - Duckling
6. Horse - Foal
7. Eagle - Eaglet or Fledgling (both are correct)
8. Cat - Kitten
9. Deer - Fawn
10. Pigeon - Squab
11. Whale - Calf
12. Fish - Fry or Fingerling (both are correct)
13. Frog - Tadpole or Polliwog (both are correct)
14. Butterfly - Caterpillar
15. Otter - Pup
16. Swan - Cygnet or Swanling (both are correct)
17. Boar - Piglet, Shoat or Farrow (all three are correct)
18. Porcupine - Porcupette

Here's what the printout looks like for this game - 

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Four Tips for Planning a Successful Office Party

Throwing a successful office party can be tricky, there are a lot of little decisions to take into consideration.  You want it to be fun, but still professional.  Here are a few tips I've learned over the course of my office party planning experiences -

• Pick a day for the party that is most likely to maximize staff turnout.  In a traditional Monday - Friday workspace, the best day for a party will usually be a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday since staff are more likely to take a Friday or Monday off to get a three-day weekend or to telecommute on those days.  Tuesday - Thursday are typically the core business days in many workplaces.  If this isn't the case where you work, note what the core business days are and plan your party on one of those days.

• Pick a party event theme that is simple, fun, and appropriate.  Keep it simple, because the main goal of your party is usually just to get coworkers together to socialize, to be able to enjoy each others company and talk about something other than work.  Pick a theme that's easy to execute, like a themed potluck.  Make sure it's appropriate for the event, however.  For example, "nachos" will never be a suitable theme for a baby shower. 

• Games and activities can be fun, but aren't always necessary.  Usually just getting folks together to talk and enjoy a good meal is often enough to keep things interesting.  The more people attending your party, the truer this tends to be as it gives people an opportunity to visit with a large number of people.  If there is enthusiasm among your group for some party games, go with it.  Just don't force it.

• A little quiet background music can be a pleasant addition.  I usually go with a mix of instrumental music from a couple different genres and keep the volume just low enough as to not be a distraction.  If at some point you can't hear the music because people are talking over it, that can be a good thing, as your attendees are actually engaging in successful conversation and not standing around awkwardly. 

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Download Free Special Event Guest Sign-In Sheet Template (Excel and PDF Format)

Download a free event sign-in sheet template I whipped up here for free:

Excel file link: http://www.filedropper.com/specialeventvisitorsign-insheettemplate

PDF file link: http://www.filedropper.com/specialeventvisitorsign-insheettemplate_1

The template contains basic categories for participants to fill out:

• Name
• Company/Organization Affiliation
• E-mail Contact Info
• Extra Column for whatever you might need for your event

The template is in Microsoft Excel format.  Edit and change the template as much you need to suit the needs of whatever conference, symposium, meeting, convention, forum, seminar or delegation you're hosting.

Here's a quick look at the sign-in sheet template:

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Download Free Potluck Sign-Up Sheet Template (Word and PDF Format)

If you are in need of a sign-up sheet for an office/workplace potluck event, look no further

PDF Template File Download Link:

http://www.filedropper.com/potlucksign-upsheettemplate_1

Excel Template File Download Link: 

http://www.filedropper.com/potlucksign-upsheettemplate

I've included 5 categories: 

• Main Dishes 
• Entrees
• Desserts
• Beverages
• Plates/Utensils/Ice

You can edit out/replace any categories to make the sheet work to your event.  The file is in Microsoft Excel format and you can edit/print/use it as much as you like, use it for any sort of potluck or cooperative meal you are planning for.

Here's a look at the signup sheet to check out before you download:
 

Hope this helps all you party planners out there!

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