News and photos

Issue No 49:
28 August 2008

Welcome to our forty-nineth PartyChitChat.

Here is our news:

• I am sorry this newsletter is a bit late. I have been travelling back to the USA.
• I finished the mystery set in Hawaii. It is called "Hawaiian Lunacy" and it is in play format for 12 to 16 guests. I intend to add more versions in the coming months.
• We have two of our mystery party games available on CDs: "Celebrity Celebrations" and "Who Killed Santa?". The CDs contain the same files as the normal kits you download from our website – so host's guide, invitations and clue files. But they contain the small standard versions for 8 to 16 guests and the meet and mingle version for 17 to 30. As a special offer for readers of this newsletter: we are going to send out these CDs for the old price of $34.95 US and with free postage within the USA. To order these, within the US phone 707 994 5067 Mon–Fri 12 Noon–2:00pm Pacific Standard Time. Each of these CDs would make a great birthday or Xmas gift!

• In the coming months we are going to be looking at some of our kits and seeing if we can make them more educational with the help of an educational psychologist. So we may create more school versions and versions for younger teens. Please let us know if you would like to be informed when these new versions are ready by emailing info@merrimysteries.com.

In this issue, we have articles about:

• Our photo competition winners
• Our decoration competition.

Our photo competition winners

We have had a number of entrants and winners this month. The winners are:

• Joe O'Sullivan (UK)
• Cathy Wilson (USA)
• Michelle Hurley (USA)
• Galean Wilder (USA).

We are commencing a new competition with a closing date of 15 September 2008 (see photos.htm for details).

Decoration competition

Our winner is Galean Wilder (USA). Galean went to the trouble of creating Hollywood stars for each of the celebrity guests for her "Celebrity Celebrations" party (see photos below). Just this week, I visited LA and I saw the stars on the sidewalk myself. I received Galean's photos before I did this, so seeing them made me appreciate even more fully the excellence of her decorations.

We are commencing a new competition with a closing date of 15 September 2008 (see decor.htm for details).

Here are some of Joe's photos from his "Celebrity Celebrations" party:

Joe sent in this feedback about his party:

"Please see the attached photos re our family party. It was my 60th and my wife and I organised it and purchased the kit. The ages ranged from my grand son (age 11) playing Bruce Lee to my mother in law (age 93) playing Lucille Ball. We held the event in our local Church Hall and had great fun decorating it. A local restaurant ("the Boulevard") provided the food. Everyone agreed it was a great event

Many thanks

Joe O'Sullivan"

Here are some of Cathy Wilson's (Queen of the Snake River Scarletts (Red Hat Society) photos from her "Love Letter" party:

Cathy sent in this feedback about her party:

"The ladies had such a great time with this activity. We had a beautiful tea party with lively discussion. Participation for this event was at its highest. We love dressing up! I highly recommend it for any group."

Here are some of Michelle Hurley's photos from her "Celebrity Celebrations " party:

Michelle sent in this feedback about her party:

"I ordered the Mystery in the Library for my daughter's 13th birthday party. We were a little nervous about doing a party like this because "it hasn't been done around here before". It was really neat and the boys really got more into the costumes than the girls. I asked that the parents not go out and buy costumes but pull things together. I gave the kids a description of their character and let them go from there. It turned out great and I gave each kid a t-shirt as a party favor. I'm attaching several pics. We will be back for a different party for Halloween. Thanks so much!

Michelle
Hurley, MS"

Here are some of Galean Wilder's photos from her "Celebrity Celebrations " party:

Galean sent in this feedback about her party:

"The party was for 14-16 year olds...mostly kids just getting out of 8th grade. They seemed ever so much more interested in staying in character and telling everyone what they knew than solving the mystery, but they all had a great time and laughed for hours. We played Twilight Zone in one room and a Doris Day movie in another. We also had a karaoke and that was probably the most popular thing. Everyone had a great time! It was a wild night!"

My daughter is over the top with all of her parties. She printed pictures of all of the celebrities and put them in frames throughout the house, as you suggested. It looked great! All we did was print a black and white photocopy and it looked like we knew Bette Davis and John Wayne because we had a framed photo.

We bought those peel and stick (reusable too) stars from some sight selling hollywood decorations...the same place we bought the red carpet, gold plates, napkins, etc. Another fascinating thing to the kids was the plastic champagne glasses. I made punch and served it in those glasses. We also bought "crime scene" tape from a website too and I went to Home Depot and bought yellow "caution" tape. The teens considered it a party favor and decorated themselves with the tape.

It was a clever party thanks to your kit and a few new ideas from Meg.