Mom’s Nite Out

A few weeks’ ago, I signed up with HouseParty.com to host a party promoting the new TNT drama, HawthoRNe with Jada Pinkett Smith. I was supposed to invite a few friends over to watch a preview of the series pilot and just have some fun. HouseParty provides some little gifts for guests (in this case, cute little first aid kits). The parties were supposed to take place the weekend of June 5th.

Now, June is a crazy-busy time around here. Many of my friends are teachers, so they’re all wrapping up their school years. We’ve got a bunch of birthdays (including our lovely LadyBug), anniversaries and so on. Since it’s hard to find the time to just relax at this time of year, I decided that I wanted to do something  a little more special for my friends and family. These women are fantastic. Most of them are in social service fields… nurses, teachers, social workers, etc. They’re moms. They spend a lot of their time and energy taking care of other people.

I was able to find some very generous sponsors to help create fun swag bags for the ladies in attendance. Before I tell you just how much fun we had, I want to give a heart-felt thank you to:

• Stop & Shop
• Pogo.com
• EA Sports Active
• The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire
• Karen Clark with StoryTime Felts

We started the night with a demo of my new EA Sports Active on the Wii. My cousin kindly did a short workout with a variety of sports activities and some strength activities as well. Everyone was impressed and they were excited to know that they had a chance to win one at the end of the evening. While my cousin got a workout, the rest of us chowed down on chocolate fondue, cupcakes and some little appetizers, all courtesy of Stop & Shop.

After that, we settled in to watch HawthoRNe. After almost an hour of tears, suspense and even some laughter, we all agreed that it’s a pretty good show. I’m looking forward to having some quality TV to watch over the summer! HouseParty had provided some quizzes, so we scored our results and shared our feedback on the TV show.

Then it was time for the goodie bags and giveaways! The Sports Active was in demand, but other guests were also excited to win Stop & Shop gift cards and an animal print for a child’s room. No one left the party empty-handed. Pogo.com supplied each guest with a swanky sling backpack, video game, card game, notebook/pen set and Club Pogo gift codes. We had shopping bags and more gift cards from Stop & Shop. The Children’s Museum of NH provided passes for each guest, and Karen from Story Time Felts sent us each a cute fairy-tale mask.

The evening ended with silliness as guests donned their felt masks and we broke out the Carnival Games disc for the Wii.

Despite my two kids’ refusal to sleep (thank goodness for Big Guy’s constant vigilance with that), we all had a lot of fun. It was nice to get together without kids and just be able to laugh and talk with one another. I’m hoping to make this an annual event to pamper the lovely ladies in my life.