Tag Archives: small group

Progressive Dinner Activity

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Remember that Progressive Dinner Activity I mentioned in my previous post (if not, here it is)? It’s a fun activity for a group of people 10+.

I’m in a fellowship group for my church. There are at least 5 groups in the East Bay, some with catered to families with kids. Occasionally, we’ll meet with other groups to get to know them a bit better, but it’s always hard to find an activity that we all enjoy (usually our activity will consist of food). This past Friday, we hosted something called a Progressive Dinner.

Progressive Dinner

Here is how it works – You have homes host an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert. The host will cook the meals (preferably prior so they can join in on the fun), and the other groups will travel from home to home for each course. 3 Locations for 3 different courses, and everyone gets to travel to visit homes and enjoy food.

Our dinner was a bit more complicated since we had over 30+ people. Our variation was the 3 homes hosted all three courses, while the travelers would go from home to home. Different groups of people so that we could get to know everyone a bit better.

My group got fancy – we made menus for the table so that people could see what courses we were making. We also gave little goodie bags to everyone who came over (yup, overachievers!).

Our appetizer – Fresh crab cakes on a toasted Hawaiian bun with a dressed arugula salad

Crab cakes
^^^ Mounds and mounds of crab cakes!

Appetizer

Main course – Miso salmon on a bed of wasabi infused mashed potatoes and a side of seasoned green beans

Miso
^^^ Look at that glaze!

Main Course

Dessert – Cast iron s’mores (so easy and so fun)

Dessert

Smores

Smores Done
^^^ Mmm… Mmm… Mmm… Those crispy tops!

Then we gave out these cutie little goodie bags

Take Home

Goodie Bag

These treats were simple to put together – 1 graham cracker broken in half, half a Hershey’s bar, and 2 marshmallows, put together in a sandwich bag, and tied with twine and a tag. Want to recreate this? Just download and print my tag here!

What do you think about this activity? Is this something you can do? What are some other fun activities that big groups can partake in? Please give me some ideas because we need some fresh thinking!

With Love,
Jay
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Find my crab cake recipe here

Hottest Camping Weekend Ever!

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This was by far the hottest weekend I’ve ever gone camping. When we arrived at Henry Coe State Park on Friday, the temperature reached 103° F. We knew we were in for some heat. That’s an understatement!

Bees and wasps galore when the heat is in. They swarmed our food, but thankfully no one got stung. That’s good right? Since the state of California is in a drought right now, everything is dry. Sadly for us, that meant no charcoal or wood fires. No campfire makes me a sad girl. Nonetheless it was still a fun trip!

On Friday night, we got in, scoped out our sites, pitched our tents, and started to make dinner before dark. I prepped some chicken teriyaki at home so we simply cooked it, cooked some spam, heated the rice up, and supplemented with seaweed. Asian meal at it’s finest, chicken for protein and deconstructed spam musubis for dinner. I also made some brownies at home to bring as dessert. Delish!

Niki

Boys

Aaron

Spam

We played some games that night and then went to sleep. MG and I didn’t use our tarp over our tents that night so that we could see through the mess and feel the night breeze. Comparatively speaking to my other camping experiences, this was a hot night. Mid 60°F to low 70°F is pretty hot for sleeping. Once dawn hit, it was too hot to sleep in; everyone was up by 7am.

We prepped breakfast, sat around and talked, made our sandwiches, and started a 5 mile hike. We even brought our swimsuits because midway through the hike, there’s a lake. We were excited to be able to cool off… but once we got to the lake, we realized why it was named “frog lake.” Thousands of frogs jumping everywhere, a layer of slime, and stagnant water. Great! Who’s getting in first? Nobody. We didn’t want to risk our lives in this water…

Gang

Hiking

Gandalf
^^^ Look at Gandalf here trying to fashion his walking stick

Frog Lake
Oh okay… Let me just jump right in here… NOT

Frogs
All those rock lookin things… frogs.

We hiked back down and asked the ranger where we could swim. Apparently in the county of Santa Clara, you cannot swim in bodies of water. Our ranger told us 1) we could swim in frog lake (who-the-eff does that!?!) or 2) we could “fall” into Anderson Lake nearby to cool off. We drove back down the mountain and dipped into the super muddy Lake to cool off. At that point, having some sort of water to degrease and get the caked on sunscreen off was worth it!

Perhaps we stopped by a McDonald’s afterwards for ice cream… maybe. Can you blame me?

We fix up some burgers, ramen, smores and smoreos for the night. Oh yes, you read that right. I said smoreos; roasted marshmallows sandwiched into oreos. You’re welcome for opening your eyes.

Smores

We played games, the girls did facials, and then we all headed to bed for an early morning to get to church on time.

Note to the reader: Quiet time is at 10pm at campsites. Don’t cook and talk loudly at midnight! Or else you’ll hear from me…

Great camping trip! I’ve had better ones but the fellowship during this trip was definitely memorable!

Have a great week y’all!
Jay