White Elephant Bingo Party

A White Elephant Bingo Party is a fun twist to the typical holiday gathering. Post may contain affiliate links.

Party #1: White Elephant Bingo Party… CHECK! We made a few rookie mistakes, created some last minute additions, but thankfully the party came together and everyone commented after the fact that they had had a great time. Yes!!! Party #1 a success!!! If you want to know what all this party business is about check out our 9 parties in 9 weeks challenge.

The reason we decided to throw a White Elephant Bingo party is because, due to living across the country, we miss the one that my sister hosts after Christmas every year. It is always a lot of fun, especially seeing the crazy gifts that everyone brings. I never understood why people hold White Elephant parties before Christmas and not after. Don’t people have enough shopping to do?!

White Elephant Bingo Party Prep

As you can see, preparing for parties is a family affair in our home. 🙂  The center of this party’s decoration came from an idea for a sign I wanted to make with big lights and chalkboard paint.

Using a piece of particle board that came in the packing of a new recliner we had purchased, my husband began work on the sign by drilling holes around the border. My son and I painted it with chalkboard paint which was originally all I was planning to do, but then I remembered we had some gold spray paint… and that took me off on a gold theme kick! We taped off the inside and spray painted the borders. After it was dry, we inserted the lights we had purchased for our Backyard BBQ party into the holes, I wrote out the party’s theme, my husband hung it up and BAM there was our sign!    

How do you like it?! I love it because I can use it over and over again with any party. Also it didn’t cost us a penny!

To go along with the white elephant theme, I spent some time cutting out rice krispie elephants. A cookie cutter would have been nice! 🙂

Remember I mentioned we made some last minute additions to the party?

Well what happened was while in my gold kick, I was looking through Pinterest for some ideas… anyways I found this simple tutorial on how to make tissue paper tassel garland. I had seen tassel garland before but never thought to make it. I was clueless to how to go about constructing it.

Day of the party, I bundled the boys into the car and drove to the craft store to pick up some tissue paper and other possible supplies for the party. The garland ended up costing less than $5! Making each tassel is quite easy and quick… it is just the matter of making several of them that it becomes rather tedious. Needless to say, it put me a little behind schedule.

Another last minute decoration was spray painting an old bottle and adding glitter to another. I debated whether or not I needed to add something to the bottles like flowers or candles but ended up displaying them as is and was happy with the result.

I had seen several free bingo card printables online but was surprised when I couldn’t find any plain, simple bingo cards. All of the bingo cards were themed. So I created and designed my own bingo cards with a bit of vintage feel. You can download them over HERE. We used chocolate kisses for the markers… which incidentally we ran out of pretty quick for they were a favorite goody to munch on.

The Party Set Up

Everything literally came together seconds before guests arrived and even after they came in we hurried around to finish up some last minute touches. We didn’t know what type of music to play at a bingo party, so to set a different mood than the every day, we put on a little Glenn Miller.

How to Play White Elephant Bingo

I strongly dislike the game of bingo.

They play it at my husband’s work parties and it isn’t fun at all. Everyone has a bizzillion cards they are scanning while intently listening to the caller. They don’t socialize and everyone is disappointed when someone else calls out bingo because it means they didn’t win. You may spend an hour sitting there and step away with nothing.

That is why I prefer our little game of White Elephant Bingo. Have you ever played White Elephant Bingo? It is simply a combination of the two.

How it works is everyone brings a gift. You start playing bingo and whoever calls out the first bingo gets to choose a gift. They unwrap it for all to see and then we continue playing. We allow two other wins before we clear cards and start again. If you get a second bingo, you have the option of keeping your gift or ‘stealing’ someone else’s opened gift in exchange for yours. We play until everyone wins at least once and then we play a final round, that of blackout bingo. If you win this round, you have the option of keeping your gift or making the last steal of the night.

The Food

For this party, we asked our guests to bring a finger food to share. Ever since going through the headache of preparing all the food for our 1920’s party, I decided that although I enjoy making the food, doing everything was just too much. I cannot begin to tell you the stress the deviled eggs gave me from that party!

Scarves were a popular item.

Because the gold theme idea came last minute, I really appreciated those that made the effort to sport some gold.

There were a few coveted items throughout the night, but everyone came away having had a good time.

So where were my littles during this time? Well the party started at 7pm … right around Tennessees’ bedtime, so I nursed him and put him to bed in the first stage of the party when guests were mingling. For Boston, we inserted a movie on for him in another room, and besides an occasional visit from him to snag a chocolate kiss or two, he was golden!

There were a lot more decoration ideas that I would have liked to do but we ran out of time and thankfully I am okay with that!

So will you be throwing a white elephant bingo party? 🙂