AD – Breaking the “Too Busy” Barriers – Reconnecting with Good friends and Great games*

Adult life is so hard, huh? Often when you want to reconnect with your friends, you compare calendars and there’s that all too familiar scenario… “How does the 5^th sound?” “I’m out that day what about the 7^th?” “Oh, I can’t do that… 9^th?” “Busy then… Erm…”

That’s why when the fantastic team over at giffgaff gifted me a games night kit and challenged me to host a games night, I thought it’d be a fantastic way to reconnect my friends as a group. We’d not spent any time together for so long and it seemed like the perfect excuse!

*Disclaimer: This post contains gifted content from giffgaff

Sometimes I really crave just being able to rock up at friend’s house for a chat and a quick game of Scrabble, or that ‘community’ feeling I had when I shared a house with a bunch of mates at university. We would all gather round in the living room to chat and spend some quality time together then, but now with how busy all our lives are, we don’t always get to just chill out, sit back and have fun.

I’ve written a few times now about how important my friends are to me and why I feel so lucky to have so many fantastic people in my life. Whether I see them once a year, once or twice a month, or talk to them almost every day… they all mean ever such a lot to me.

I received the most incredible gift box from giffgaff which contained all the things I’d need to host a top games night – and I mean everything! From the giffgaff SIM cards* to send invitations, to an Amazon Echo and JustEat voucher to order food, the party games themselves, a Go-Pro to document it… I was absolutely over the moon with how thoughtful it all was – it included everything I needed from start to finish – even a trophy for the winner! Now all I needed to bring was the people. Challenge accepted.

I thought I’d break the ‘too busy’ barriers and invite just a few of my closest friends over for a “big night in” later that week. To my surprise, we settled on a day super quickly – it just shows you that your best friends will always have your back (especially at the promise of food and party games!) We rocked up, popped on some background TV and got stuck right in to some party games, sent to me by Big Potato* as part of the games night package.

The games themselves were superb – Big Potato* really outdid themselves with Obama Llama 2! I’d played the first one before, so I was super excited to play this one too and to share the experience with some of my closest pals. We all have such similar senses of humour and are really in sync with one another when we all get together – it made for a very friendly, hilarious and competitive game!

We made sure to order from JustEat – it just so happened that my friend’s mum owns a Chinese takeaway… very convenient and extra tasty! We grabbed a load of food to share and got stuck right in half way through the games. I find it really lovely to share food with people too – we’re so used to ordering separately now that I forgot how nice and communal the feeling is when you’re all sharing.

Some of my favourite times with friends aren’t going out for drinks or even trying new experiences – it’s chatting over a cup of tea, watching old movies or playing some epic games like these. We also polished off a round of “Weird things people say on the Internet” and “Box of Doom” which Big Potato gifted to us, and we even cracked open another game of classic Exploding Kittens. My only regret was that I wasn’t skilled enough to win the trophy!

I want to say thank you so much to giffgaff for giving me the tools I needed to do this. You helped bring us all together to experience some fantastic new games and spend some quality time together for the first time in a long time. We’ve even said that we should make it a regular thing! It’s nights like these that I cherish the most and will always be a staple of how I stay connected to my friends.