Casual Get-Togethers to Host This Year

The Covid-19 virus began spreading among humans 5 years ago. How was it already 5 years ago? Where has the time gone? I don’t know about you, but I still feel like my social life hasn’t really recovered from all the social distancing we had to do.

Pre-pandemic, I’d host things at my home all the time. I loved having friends over. I loved organizing outings for groups of people. I loved cooking for others. These days? I rarely do. It’s like I lost the stamina or the muscles for it.

For the last 2 years I’ve been really trying to re-balance my life but I still feel like I’ve maybe changed into a much more introverted version of myself. Beginning during the lockdowns in the pandemic, I developed more quiet, introverted hobbies (like writing, sewing, and reading) that are still some of my favourite ways to spend my free time. Yet, I still feel like a shell of my former self sometimes.

What about you? Do you feel like you’ve socially recovered from the pandemic? How are your relationships? Do you see your friends in person or just online?

New Year, New Resolutions

The past few years I’ve assigned an intentional word as my New Year’s Resolution. In 2024, my word was “Connect”. I wanted to spend more time connecting intentionally with others offline. I wanted to spend less time answering the questions of random strangers online in Facebook groups and subreddits. I think the year started off well – I hosted Friday night card club and a mother-daughter tea party. I began hosting my Time Traveller’s book club. Then as our home renovations kicked into high gear in the middle of the year and I moved out of my home into a furnished rental, I disappeared from my offline life and took refuge in the digital again. Despite this disrupted period, I’ll give myself credit for a lot of connections I made in 2024.

In 2025 my word is going to be “Rooted”. I moved back into my home the evening of December 31st 2024 and after a big effort to get our beds back together, I rang in the New Year with my head on my pillow. While our renovations are not done yet and we will still be living in a construction zone, in 2025 we will be rebuilding, unpacking, and putting our home and our lives back together. I want to feel rooted in my home and my community. I want to continue connecting with others. I want to continue inviting people into my real life. I want to continue creating. I hope to combine all my words from the past several years into building intentional community and hosting more events for friends and neighbours in my local neighbourhood. I want to plant roots. I want to bloom where I’m planted.

I’d love to help you do the same. Read on for some ideas for events to host. But first, some words of wisdom on hosting from someone who has been there, done it.

Heather’s Blunt Tips for Hosting Low-Frustration Events

First, choose a time and location that works for you. Cast your net widely and invite more people than you think you should because many people will love the idea but be unable to make the time you can make, or, I’m sorry to say, will bail and be no-shows the day of. This is why I don’t change the plans from times and locations that work for me because if I bend the plans to accommodate others, inevitably it seems those same people don’t show up. So take the hint….they were trying to be polite when they said “What a great idea! I wish we could come but that time doesn’t work (or I can’t get there, my car is broken)” (Translation: I don’t actually want to attend). If they really want to come, they will make it happen. This is why I like to host recurring semi-regular events…If people truly want to come but have a conflict, they will make sure to attend next month. And if they don’t, no big deal. You don’t want to be friends with people who don’t want to be friends with you, after all.

Truly the key to not getting stressed out or discouraged when hosting things is to set yourself up to enjoy the time even if nobody shows up. I don’t put a lot of effort into the events, and I don’t spend a lot of money on them. Because kids really do get sick at the worst times. People get overwhelmed, they double-book themselves, or they are in the middle of binge watching Bridgerton. Try not to take it personally, and try again, inviting different people. Eventually you will find people who have similar schedules and interests to you, live nearby, and who like hanging out with you.

I’ve tried all sorts of different tools to organize events – Group MMS (text messages), What’s App groups, Facebook groups, Emails and Calendar Invites. The platform that works best depends on what it is and who I’m inviting. I used to host things through a private Facebook group I created or Facebook events, but as more Millenials have moved off of Facebook, migrating to email, calendar invites, and texts worked better. I stay flexible and try different tools depending on who I’m inviting.

So now that we’ve got some cold-hard reality of the complexities of hosting group gatherings in 2025 out of the way, here are some of my ideas for low-effort, affordable, and fun casual events to host for friends this year.

Some Events to Host and How to Host Them:

Friday Night Card Club

Last year, I sent out a group text to a few neighbors and friends who lived nearby to invite them over for a Friday night card club. Anytime after 7:30 pm and leave by 9:30 pm. I had a deck of cards and a pot of caffeine-free tea. Each week I’d have different people come by and join in. Some weeks we had 4 players, some weeks it was just the two of us. We played cribbage, skat, hearts, and golf. We taught each other new games and played old favourites. We didn’t play difficult games (it had been a long week after all!) and we talked while we played. We wore our comfy sweat pants.

I prefaced the club by letting my friends know that on Friday nights I take a Sabbath. My family eats takeout. It’s been a long week of homeschooling and while I try to get the clutter out of the way, and I’ll make sure the toilet is flushed – don’t expect a perfect home. I dim the lights and light some candles so the clutter isn’t as obvious.

Friday night card club ended up being a cozy, intentional, easy way to gather with friends. I look forward to rekindling the club in the New Year.

Crafternoons

My daughter and I love to do crafts together. As homeschoolers, I’m also trying to cultivate a group of friends for her outside of her extra-curricular activities. This year, I’m going to try something new: Mother-Daughter Crafternoons. I’ve invited some of the little girls from our homeschool co-op as well as little girls who live in our neighbourhood and their moms to attend a crafting and baking afternoon once per month, from 2-4 pm.

My goal with Crafternoons is to host a consistent group of girls to encourage female friendship, learn home-centered and entrepreneurial skills, build confidence in their power as girls, and provide giving and service opportunities.
Each month I’ve planned an easy craft and a baking project that will either contribute towards hosting a party, giving as a gift, or selling at a little side-walk holiday craft sale. Eventually I will get my “plans” on my blog for you to download (once we’ve done the craft and baking project and I know if it’s actually feasible), but if you’re interested in an imperfect/slightly incomplete and in-progress plan that hasn’t yet been tested, get in touch. I’m happy to send it over if you want to try out Crafternoons yourself. I’d love any feedback of what worked and what didn’t!

Around the World Potluck

I love cooking for people, but sometimes it can get stressful and also expensive. In my experience, people also like to contribute and bring something when they are invited to dinner. Sharing a meal and sharing the labor of preparing the meal is a great way to connect with others and strengthen friendships. Potlucks are great for this! But sometimes potlucks can be a bit haphazard and you end up with a bunch of salads and the flavors are all over the place. Enter the Around the World Potluck: You invite some families over to have a potluck featuring cuisine from a specific country. Each family brings a dish (either a side or a main) from that cuisine-style. I find it easiest if you choose someone to bring the dessert, so that you don’t end up with a bunch of desserts. I also find it easiest if the host provides the drinks (but we do alcohol-free in my home, so that makes providing drinks more affordable). Alternately you could do BYOB.

Not a group of cooks? Running out of time? No problem – if you live in an area with a diversity of restaurants, I think it’s totally fair to make the potluck take-out friendly and bring a dish ordered from a restaurant.

In preparation for the potluck evening, kids can research the country, make a paper flag for decoration, learn some games popular with kids in that country to play with the other families at the potluck, and find some music from the country to play on your sound system the night of.

Here are some countries to start with to inspire your Around the World Potlucks:

• Mexico (I love a Mexican fiesta!)
• India (yum a curry buffet!)
• China (I’ve good at ordering takeout but I’m up for a challenge to cook one of my favourite dishes!)
• Italy (a pretty familiar family favourite!)

You can also start with the countries that some people in your friend group might be from! We live in a very diverse neighbour and amongst our neighbours we have families from India, Turkey, China, Iran, Australia, Germany, and Japan. It’s even better when someone from the invite list is from the country you’ve chosen for the potluck – they can share favourite recipes, memories from their lives living in that country, some common phrases from the language, and more.

Saturday Morning Coffee Club

When the weather warms up, why not put a patio table and chairs on your front lawn and invite the neighbours over to drop in for coffee and baked goods Saturday morning? We have a lovely and woefully under-used front porch that I’d love to host coffee and chats for people to stop by as they go on their morning walks. It’s a great way to catch up with neighbours young and old. To let neighbours know about it, I text it to our street’s What’s App group. Our neighbourhood also has a private Facebook group for folks on neighbouring streets.

An urn like this one makes it easy to bring coffee outside and ready for anyone to drop by for a cup.

Nature Walk Group

Once a week on a Friday afternoon we gather with our homeschool nature walk group. When the kids were smaller and toddled along pretty slowly, we’ve also invited retired seniors from our churches to join us. It’s been a lovely time walking slowly through a nature preserve at a senior’s/preschooler’s pace.

What I’ve found works for organizing this group is just a group text or chat on What’s App, or when we’ve had seniors in our group, an email. An agreed upon time and figuring out the plan the day before so we can decide where to go based on the weather forecast. I usually take a screenshot from a map point on my phone to attach to show where we will meet along with the Google Maps location.

Non-Fiction Book Club

I’m not a fan of traditional book clubs. If someone assigns me a fictional novel to read, I know one thing for sure…I’m not reading that novel. I don’t know what it is about me, but I just have a philosophical dig-my-heels-in to assigned reading, maybe stemming from my school days.

But I love talking about books with people, so instead I host a non-fiction book club with a different premise: we choose a broad topic (say, nature, or health, or politics) and everyone can bring any book they’ve read (either recently or in the past) under the umbrella of that topic. During the book club, we each take 5 minutes to summarize the main points in our book and then we have a broader conversation about the topic comparing and contrasting the books, the author’s perspectives, etc. It’s actually remarkable how much overlap there is and what great conversations we’ve had on various topics sharing about our books.

One of my favourite things about this club format is I get to know people better based on what they chose to read under the topic umbrella. You know that famous saying, “You are what you read”? Well now I know that a friend of mine chose to read 300 pages about bats. It’s really cool to get to know people through their passions and learn from them. I know a lot more about bats now because my friend passionately told me all about what she learned about them at our non-fiction book club! I also know a lot more about my friend!

Time Traveller’s Book Club

The Time Traveller’s Book Club is similar in scope to the non-fiction book club where attendees can bring any book they’ve read that is set in or written in a specificied time period, for example 1800-1850.

The writing piece can be:

• Contemporary fiction written in the chosen time period (written and set)
• Historical fiction set in the chosen time period but written at a later date.
• A nonfiction piece written in the chosen time period
• A nonfiction piece written about something that happened or someone who lived in the chosen time period.
• A primary source from the chosen time period.
• Pieces can be written for adults or children (do not underestimate the power of juvenile fiction and picture books to learn about something new!)
• Writing pieces can be set anywhere in the world, and a broad worldly view of the time period makes for a fascinating discussion and discovering of what historical events were happening concurrently across the globe.

Your club might also choose to include movies, podcasts, radio-shows, Youtube videos as well. It doesn’t have to just be books.

On the day of the club, I’ve also played music from the time period, and I’ve displayed art painted in the time period. I have this amazing book of art (the Metropolitan Museum of Art Masterpiece Paintings) that is ordered chronologically, so I display that on the dining room table for folks to flip through. I’ve also found art by different artists of the era on Wikipedia and printed it with my home printer or displayed on a tablet or television screen. I’ve also made a quick timeline with a long piece of paper and a marker and each guest has written their book title on the timeline for where it fits in the 50 year period we chose.

It’s a pretty low-effort time travel – but you could make it as complex as you’d like – including costumes (if your group likes dressing up), specific foods reminiscent of the time period (salt cod anyone?), and hairstyles.

Each guest spends 5 minutes or so summarizing their book and then we have a broader discussion of the time period, pulling out common themes across our books, or pointing out differences between our sources. We’ve had really fascinating discussions.

I’ve teamed up with my local history museum to host the Time Traveller’s Book Club in their event space and invited their membership to join me. It’s been a great way to meet others who love history and love books. We always have tea and cookies too!

I hope these ideas have left you feeling inspired to invite people into your life and host something feasible and affordable for your friends and neighbors.

May you have a rooted 2025!

ps: This post contains Amazon affiliate links from which I receive a small commission on qualifying purchases. Thank you for your support!

Enjoyed this post? Check out some of my other recent posts:

• Why Halloween is Important for Kids
• Kids Books about Trustworthiness
• Having a Pet Hamster for Families
• Kids Books About Compassion
• Geography Books for Kids

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