Games to Play at a Housewarming Party

Once you've settled into your new home, invite friends and family to a housewarming party. Along with refreshments and guided tours, organize games to help your old friends meet your new neighbors and let everyone compete for house-related prizes. Before you choose which games to play, consider how much time you have to prepare, how much you want to spend and what type of games people will enjoy.

Devise an inexpensive housewarming party game for guests to play independently as they tour your home. Before the party starts, move 10 of the necessities and decorative items in your rooms to different locations. For example, place a roll of toilet paper in the kitchen, a colander in the bedroom and a bed pillow on the living room couch. Create 10 additional "errors" throughout the home, such as hanging a picture upside-down, inserting a photo of a different family into a picture frame or turning all of your books backward on the shelf. Give each guest a clipboard and a piece of paper with lines numbered one through 20. Instruct them to write down any errors they spot while visiting each room.

Because guests will discuss your home during the festivities, create a housewarming activity that rewards guests for careful listening. Place three house-key stickers on each guest's shirt as the party begins. If a guest catches another guest uttering the word "home" or "house" during the party, he claims that person's sticker and places it on his shirt. At the end of the party, award prizes such as gift cards to a home improvement store, a decorative picture frame or a jar of fragrant bath salts to the guests who have the most stickers.

Discover how much your guests know about your decorating style, home features and the neighborhood with a multiple-choice quiz. The quiz will take up to an hour to prepare since you'll need to devise questions and three to four answers for each. Consider questions about the square footage of your new home, the colors you plan to use on the walls, the name of the nearest grocery store and the major cross streets near your home. If two guests get the same number of questions right, provide 10 scrambled, home-related words such as "garage," "television," "living room" and "nursery" as a tiebreaker.

If children will be attending the party, keep the young guests entertained with a kids' housewarming game. Before the event, hide 20 to 30 house stickers throughout your home. After the adults have finished touring the rooms, let the kids run around to gather all the stickers they can find in two minutes. Give the winners prizes such as a magnifying glass, building blocks or small play set.