Guessing Jars – Creative Juice by Loni

It seems that weddings, births and deaths comes in clusters. Happily, I am in the midst of weddings and with a daughter that just got engaged last week, there is more to come 🙂

Today I wanted to share the shower my friend Rita and I hosted for our friend Sariah. I shared the invitation I created with My Digital Studio here and we used it for part of the decor:

We served sandwiches and guests made their own sugar cookie “fruit pizza”:

We played the guessing jar game though what I failed to mention in the original post (which I’ll fix today) is that after you have made your guesses, the answers are revealed and whomever is closest to the correct answer wins that jar or container! We didn’t play it quite like that at Sariah’s party, but I think I would do it that way if I could do it over again.

At the shower we called it the 5 Senses Game because they could feel (household items were tied up in the pillowcases below), smell or taste (spices from the kitchen), hear (some things were wrapped up) or look at the jars to make their guess (see).

Here are some ideas if you are doing this for a household shower:

A small jar of chocolate chips (our half pint held over 300 chips!)
Spices (just wrap a paper around the label and let them smell/taste): Basil, Oregano, Pumpkin Pie Spice, etc..
Wrap a box of band aids or staples and let them shake to see if they can guess the sound
Put household items into a pillowcase to let them feel them. In one we had kitchen utensils such as a garlic press, salad tongs, vegetable peeler, etc. In another were household items like a calculator, a 9 volt battery, a ratchet screwdriver, etc…
A jar of paper clips (guess how many)
A jar of loose change (guess how much $)
Take the labels off cans (like mandarin oranges and sweetened condensed milk) and see if they can guess what’s inside.

You could also have them guess how much something weighs or what day the groom’s birthday is on (a calendar). Remember to NUMBER each item and let everyone have time to make their guesses.

There were plenty of awesome gifts (you can imagine why she is blushing if you look at the bag):

And finally, I was excited to try out this cool recipe from the gals over at Our Best Bites for a favor for each of the guests. It’s great for hands or feet! And it smells good enough to eat.

Which technically, you could do.

It was a beautiful shower for a beautiful friend.

I’d love to hear how any of these ideas work for you. Leave me a comment if you try something and tell me how it goes!

A favorite tradition from our family reunions (on my dad’s side) are the “Guessing Jars”! If you need a fun game that EVERYONE can participate in, this is it: Each family brings a container filled with something and we number each jar. Every person gets a piece of paper and numbers it with the number of jars that are on the table, then takes a guess at how many items are in each jar (or answer the related question on the jar/container)

Our family gets pretty creative: There have been piggy banks filled with loose change (guess how much $money is in the bank), pencil boxes filled with random school supplies (guess how many hours kids go to school each year) and even a package of Oreos (If Oreo cookies were laid side by side, how many would it take to cross the Golden Gate Bridge? Answer: 28,800)

But most of our “jars” are containers filled with candy, something like this:

This particular jar was one I created the Late Night Stampers Reunion Party at Stampin’ Up! Convention and it is filled with taffy and rubber stamps! We wanted to start a new “family” tradition for the Reunion Party,and this fun game popped into my head. Here’s a close-up of the sweet tag…I have to say I love these folded paper medallions and they are as addicting to make as the sugar in the taffy!

And of course, glitter makes everything cuter, so the edges are dusted with a little bling 🙂

Update 5/28/13: Apparently I didn’t finish my thought when I originally posted this! Each jar gets a number so that people can start anywhere on the table with their guesses (for instance, you could pick up jar/container #8 and write down the number and your guess, then move to jar #12, etc, until you had made a guess for each jar). Once everyone has made their guess, the M.C. reveals the correct answers and the person who guesses closest wins that jar/container!

This is a fun game for a crowd because there can be MANY winners 🙂 You may choose to only allow a person to win ONE time. However, if they were the closest guesser on a future jar, they could choose to exchange it for their first jar, giving the original jar to the next closest guesser.

To see how we modified it for a bridal shower, see this post.