How to Have a Get-Together for Less Money and Effort: Share With Friends

I like to have people over, but food is so expensive (I can't feed friends mac n cheese just because it's what I feed myself!) and arranging a full meal for multiple people can be a bit of a mental hurdle when I tend to avoid the grocery store. 

Then one of my friends asked if we could get some people together.  She would be more than happy to bring food for five people if I wanted to open my home.

This was a terrific idea!  I try to keep my place relatively trim and hospitable, and having people over is an excuse to tidy up, not an inconvenience.  Planning meals, for me, tends to be more stressful than running a feather duster over the TV and winding up the game console cords.  For her, cooking a meal for multiple people was more fun and less inconvenient than cleaning her home, organizing schedules, providing directions, etc.  It's really a win-win situation.

Another friend can bring DVDs or maybe a game to teach us. Last time this group came over, we got on the Internet and looked up lists of the 100 Best Books Ever Written and tallied up who had read the most. It was a lot of fun. 

Sometimes it's easy to avoid gatherings of friends because of the financial or emotional costs involved, so it's tempting to go out to help alleviate these costs. But going to a movie theatre costs money. Going shopping costs money. Going to bars and restaurants costs money. Feeding people costs money. Driving costs money.  If you can pinpoint exactly what you do like (cooking, maybe) versus don't like (cleaning, maybe) about getting together in one's home instead of going out, you can work with your friends to arrange something that is fun for everybody, costs little (both in money and in effort) and is something you can do on a regular basis.  After all, most of the reason that we spend money going out with friends is because we want to build those connections.  The connections that I value most over time are with people that I enjoy talking with in my living room.  

Maybe you have a nice lawn and a friend with a croquet set. Maybe you know of a nice park and a friend with a frisbee. Maybe you have a nice tea set and a friend who knows of some good teas.  Or maybe you have a new coffee table book and a friend who you'd like to sit next to and pour over it together.  Maybe you have some stoneware clay and a friend who has a good garage for projects.  Or maybe you have a bunch of fabric you've inherited and a friend with a sewing machine.

It's easy to let the overwhelming task of providing 100% for guests keep us from just showing up with half the story.  But sometimes, showing up with half the story can help build stronger friendships.  So what if you don't have any peanut butter for sandwiches? If you're willing to share the bread and the jelly, your friends might be more than delighted to share the rest.

Free Toys: Paper Villages

Occasionally I'll post an idea that involves crafts, since crafts are a great way to use existing materials rather than buying finished products. Plus, they are usually a fun way to spend time with people or to entertain kids for free. This is not primarily a craft blog, and the purpose of these posts is NOT to make useless stuff you don't need and suddenly have to store (my main complaint with crafts for their own sake), but to provide viable free alternatives for items you might otherwise buy at great expense. 

That being said, I offer you The Art of Paper Villages.  

A friend of mine who is eight years old recently acquired a beautiful Bratz dollhouse. (Well, maybe it wasn't Bratz. Some kind of dollhouse, anyway.)  It had paper furnishings. Yes, it was a sturdy card-stock with shiny prints of their various sofa cusions, rug textures, and bedspread fabrics, but this beautiful (and no doubt pricy) dollhouse was furnished with essentially the same furnishings that I used when I was eight and had no money.  

Paper is an amazing thing. There are all kinds of lovely,expensive papers you can buy at fabulous art stores such as Sam Flaxx or Meninger's, and heavy craft papers are easily available at hobby stores such as JoAnne's or Michael's.   

Ignore them. We want free paper.  

Here's directions on how to make a paper village that is guaranteed to be equally as fun as a store-bought Bratz dollhouse. If you are all crafty and talented, it could be a beautiful hand-made gift for a child in your life. Or, if you can't draw a line to save your life (although I can't think when your line-drawing skills would end up being life-saving) you can do with with any kids in your life and the time itself ends up being the gift. At any rate, I made these when I was a kid and recently made them again at work while waiting for reports to load. Try it, you'll like it.   

You will need: 

Some kind of paper (office paper is great, but please don't go buying stuff! Use whatever is available.) 
Some kind of something to mark with (You can get fancy with markers and crayons, but a simple ballpoint pen, pencil, or old lipstick will do.) 
Maybe some tape or glue (although, if you don't have any, you can fold little tabs in the paper to get it to stay.) 
Something with which to cut paper (Fancy craft people may have xacto knives, any pair of scisors will work, and if you're good, you can just crease it until you can rip a straight line.)
Ok, do you have everything you need?   

Fold the paper into fourths in such a way that the four sections are side-by side. These will be your walls. If you are planning on using glue instead of tape, first fold a little tab over before folding in fourths. This way you have a gluing surface when you are ready to put it together. 
While folded, cut peak into the paper to make a "house" shape. 

Unfold. All four sides will have this peak. The official architectural term is "gable." Learn it-- free knowledge is a good thing. ;) 

Cut off every other gable. This way, when you set the four sides up to make a room, the gables will be across from each other. 

Use the remaining paper to create a roof by cutting a large rectangle and folding it in half. For best stability, cut it slightly wider than the walls of the house. That way the roof can rest easily on the gables.  
Before you tape your house together, you'll probably want to decorate it. Unfold your pieces so they're flat and draw house bits all over it. I don't know -- go crazy. Doors, windows, crumbling bricks, etc. Most people can draw squares and rectangles, which is pretty much what doors and windows are, so don't feel out-classed just because you've never had a drawing class. Do the same for the roof if you like. It's important to do this while the house is flat because it's a lot easier to draw on a flat surface than on a piece of paper with nothing behind it. 
Once you are done decorating, set your house up in 3-D and tape it together. I highly suggest adding tape to the roof because it will help the whole thing hold its shape better.
Ta-Da! You now have a paper house.   Try experimenting -- 

Use several sheets of paper to get bigger houses.  
Try making houses with steeper pitched gables (this means pointier roof triangles) or flat roofs.  
Try taping several house pods together to get interesting shapes.  
If you want to use the inside of the house, you could fold the paper in thirds and leave one side open.  
Try copying styles out of some of your favorite books or off the Internet. Would a Seuss house look different from one drawn by Edward Gorey?  
What kind of people live in your paper village? What kind of stores are in your village? How do you know what kind of building it is? 
Try using different types of paper to get a different effect. Sandpaper, if you have it, makes a great texture for roofs or pathways. Construction paper is sturdy and you can make really awesome houses by cutting out window boxes, flowers, doors, windows, etc out of construction paper rather than gluing them on. 
If you don't have construction paper, look through those annoying junk mail advertisements for local stores and find colors in there that you like. You could collage pictures from the circulars or just pick out textures that are interesting. For example, you could cut up an advertisement for trash bags to add trash bags to a back door of a store. Or, you could use that picture of a large rump roast because it would make a really pretty red flower.  
If you have fabric swatches, you can use these instead of paper for decorations. 
If you have blocks of wood leftover from construction, you can draw right on the wood to make a village. Then you can store the blocks in a grocery sack and have a whole transportable village that you can easily take with you.   
For inspiration, look at cityscapes made from unusual objects or Look-Alikes, a book with art by Joan Steiner.   

The fun thing about this is that it is entirely endless-- as long as you have a pen, paper, and maybe scisors, you can keep building to your heart's content.  

I'm interested in seeing what you come up with -- post links to any pictures of your paper villages in the comments section :)