Game Night Idea: Indoor Croquet

Like a lot of people, we've been trying to do more entertaining at home. Not only is it cheaper to have people over but, for us, it's more fun. It gives us a chance to cook new things, bond in the kitchen and we're on the hook for keeping the house picked up. We've hosted game nights in the past (or favorite is Boggle, probably because we're really good at it, or celebrity because it gets people up on their feet) but all rain recently mixed with a recent conversation about lawn bowling inspired us to seek out some outdoor activities that could be adjusted for indoors:

Nothing gets people loosened up like playing a silly game that most people aren't very good at. And with all the rain that we've been experiencing the idea of playing a sunday afternoon park activity inside on carpet makes us smile. Even better is we're considering having people dress up in their best tennis whites for the event.

This is a ridiculous video all about indoor croquet:

You can buy a kids indoor croquet set on amazon. There's also a slightly more grown up version available through shop.com. You can also adjust a regular outdoor set by sticking the arches into erasers (or something gummy that will hold them up).

Here is the croquet set pictured.

Comments (3)

If you're snowed in - What's wrong with taking walks in the woods, snowball fights, making snow angels, shoveling the sidewalk and using the snow to make a snowman...

...and if there's no snow - What's wrong with going outside?

None of us need more stuff to clutter the front closet or the garage - and I personally wouldn't encourage anyone to go swinging mallets and hitting balls inside my house or anyone else's.

Charades or Scrabble anyone?

posted by bepsf on February 23rd 2009 at 4:37pm
view bepsf's profile

Croquet can be a fun game. I can't believe you found a set that's almost $200 to exemplify the economical alternative to going out. But - I think it's an outdoors game. I mean, having friends over to do stuff is also fun, and if it's too cold to go outside when friends come over, I don't think croquet is the way to solve that problem. I do think with families, there's lots of stuff to do outside which can be more difficult to sell to your friends who want to visit for an evening. Of course, living in L.A. like you do, you're not going to have a lot of snow or places to meet for ice skating. If you have a yard, and you live in L.A., I find it hard to believe it's too cold in February to put a sweater on and play croquet in the yard over a couple bottles of wine. I could be way off, how cold does it get?

Anyway, bottom line, I think croquet is a fine warm-weather outdoor pastime for people of all ages. I am terrible at it, I would probably like it if I were over for dinner and you had it as an activity, but not inside. The space you need is one consideration, but even for kids who can play on a smaller field should have things they save up to do outside, otherwise they would stay inside all the time if they could!

posted by K T G on February 23rd 2009 at 5:01pm
view K T G's profile

dumb

posted by RalphEMole on February 23rd 2009 at 5:41pm
view RalphEMole's profile