British Summer Time has ended, tins of Quality Street line supermarket shelves and if you exhale hard enough you can see your breath in the air— winter has arrived and Christmas is approaching. Queuing in sub-zero temperatures outside Code becomes increasingly less appealing and the warmth and comfort of a night-in beckons. Here are six ideas for festive, fun and cosy evenings-in with friends which will confirm you made the right choice in not venturing out.
- Decorating your flat/house for Christmas – A perfect way to celebrate the start of many festive evenings-in is to decorate your home for Christmas with your flat/housemates. There are plenty of options of where you can get your decorations from: you could either use any spare ones you have from your family homes, or all pitch in and buy some from a shop that sells them at a low price such as Home Bargains/B&M/Argos. You could even make paper chains to hang up. Whilst you are decorating, you could share a few Christmas snacks such as Pringles, Quality Street or Celebrations as well as playing your favourite festive music!
- Christmas Karaoke – If you’ve still got the songs from when you were decorating whirling round your head, you and your friends can try singing them during some Christmas karaoke. There are many Christmas sing-along videos available on YouTube, ranging from older classics such as ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’ to festive pop songs such as Ariana Grande’s ‘Santa Tell Me’ and Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’. If you want to turn it into more of a game, you could all take turns to ‘perform’ and then score each other’s musical talent out of ten.
- Flat/house Come Dine with Me – We’ve all seen the long-running Channel 4 show, but why not recreate it with your flat/housemates? Over the course of several evenings (either once per week or a few consecutive nights) take turns to cook for the people you live with. If you want to replicate the show exactly, feel free to prepare the full three courses, but for a cheaper alternative you could cook just the main course. In addition to the food, you can enhance the evening with an ‘entertainment’ aspect— you could all watch a film, play a board game or play a drinking game. If you want to make it particularly festive, you could set a rule where either everyone’s food or ‘entertainment’ has to have some kind of Christmassy element. At the end of each night, you can rate each others’ hospitality out of 10 and on the final evening the highest-scoring person can be awarded a small, Christmas-themed prize.
- Christmas Baking – If you wish to further practise these culinary skills, you may want to try an evening of group Christmas baking. You could all try baking something relatively simple such as mince pies or Christmas-themed cookies. Alternatively, you could aim for something slightly more ambitious such as a yule log, a gingerbread house or Lebkuchen. You could also enjoy this evening-in by yourself! If you’re the only flat/housemate who has stayed in one night you could bake some Christmas treats alone whilst indulging in some much-needed me-time.
- Christmas Drinks – Now that you’ve tried your hand at lots of festive food, you and those you live with could try whizzing up some holiday-inspired drinks. You could make Eggnog, mulled wine, a Christmas punch or invent something of your own. Recipes for Christmas drinks are widely available online, and they also often instruct on how to make a non-alcoholic equivalent if this is something you would prefer. However, if you fancy a completely different type of drink you can concoct your own festive hot chocolate— you could experiment with cinnamon, ginger or even rum when making your usual recipe.
- Christmas Quiz Night – Everyone loves a quiz and it’s easy to add a seasonal twist. You can find Christmas quizzes online, buy a cheap festive quiz board game/book from somewhere such as the Works or even create your own. If you don’t live with many people you can answer the questions individually, but if you live in a larger household you could split into teams and work together.
Image credits:
M I S C H E L L E on Flickr. No changes made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
