This “Ingenious” Viral Housewarming Party Idea Is So Wholesome

There’s so much to figure out when you first move into a new place — how to arrange your furniture, how to set up your new utilities, how to deal with your noisy neighbors, and, of course, how to throw a housewarming party. While there’s an endless list of new apartment gift ideas, deciding what to do at a housewarming party can be less clear-cut. 

After the ceremonial home tour (which can be shockingly quick if you live in a studio), guests are usually left to grab a drink and mingle. But what if there was a cute activity for them to do that doubled as a guest book? That’s exactly what this recent TikTok proposes. The video shows a large piece of brown butcher paper taped to a door, with the prompt “Draw Yourself” written in black marker at the top. Below, two-dozen miniature doodles represent all of the guests in attendance, with each person’s name scrawled below their self-portrait. 

Not only does the craft cost basically nothing — you can find a poster board at the dollar store, buy a 10-pack from Target for $5, or use some brown paper you have on hand already — but it also leaves you with a tangible memory of the housewarming party long after guests have left. Who knows, if your friends are artistic enough you might even decide to frame the visual guest book and add it to the wall art in your new home.

TikTok commenters say the draw-yourself guest-book idea is “genius, truly,” with some people adding that they plan to use it for parties beyond housewarming. “I want this at my wedding,” one commenter says.

Although some commenters worry their friends wouldn’t rise to the occasion of a doodle self-portrait (“You have some very talented friends because I’m afraid what I would have come up with,” one comment says), no one says you have to display the poster later if you don’t want to — and the sillier the drawings, the more fun the activity is guaranteed to be. Having friends over is all about making memories, after all.