pick a movie we’re all interested in seeing, or at least reckon we’ll be able to withstand without needing to run away screaming, (there was a distinct difference between the protoengineers and the protobusinesswomen, but we were all willing to meet halfway)
go to movie
watch movie
go to a restaurant (who got to pick it was decided through the Random number generator in one of our scientific calculators)
eat, talk and be merry
get back to dorm before we got locked out
Hen night for a friend, way back when (she’d been the first girl in her group to get married, the bride was the last one):
go to dinner
go to “chippendale’s” style show
enjoy watching her husband (who she found much more attractive than any of the prettyboys) huff and puff around their store
enjoy participating in her husband’s completely-unneeded work to “prove” to her that he was much better than any prettyboy out there
For SiL and her friends:
going windowshopping,
having lunch at a mall’s food court,
more windowshopping,
pile of new clothes on the bed
Soo… which girls? All I know for sure is that food must be involved
Dang, this “friend of a friend” of mine wrote the most hilarious poem titled, “When my bitches come 'round.” It had these little gems in it, for example:
When my bitches come 'round,
We’ll have us some beer,
We only drink forties,
We don’t want to look queer.
I’m pretty sure the only mandatory activity in these situations is making fun of your S.O. You don’t have to be cruel or complain about them or anything, just point out their hilarious characteristics from the past week or so.
I think you also have to have non-healthy food. Anything you eat during a girls night does not count, so you’re good to go on the brownies and stuff.
My girlfriends come over now and then and we have fun chatting about nothing and watching stupid crap on tv. Thank god I don’t have to entertain anyone who’s pickier!
My sisters in law and I do this (and we usually invite the lone brother in law). We’ve done different things on each outing. Once, it was C&W dancing, once it was a dance club with comfy couches for watching people dance and not doing it ourselves because we’re old and out of touch. Once we cooked hot dogs and hamburgers at a private beach and did karaoke. Once we played poker. Once we just ate, drank, and karaoke’d at my house. My karaoke machine has proved to be tons of fun after we have a few French martinis under our belts.
Isn’t doing all that make-up and baking stuff more of a girls night IN?
My male imagination says a girls night out involves:
going to an establishment where liquor is served (this is mandatory);
verbally trashing men (also mandatory);
watching make strippers (optional).
We have a bookclub where we sometimes talk about the book. We also drink wine, tea, beer, soda, margaritas and eat (cheese, chocolate, fruit). We chat, we laugh, we talk about the past and the future - kids, husbands, old boyfriends and girlfriends (we aren’t all strictly straight), religion, politics, the state of the world. Sometimes we bail and watch a movie.
We go off on retreat once a year where we do more talking, watch movies, play games, undertake craft projects, cook, eat.
Most of us are not exceptionally girly. One of my girlfriends collects power tools (she is a set designer). Another plays competitive hockey. Most seldom wear any makeup. On some retreats we do girly things that are optional, like painting toenails strange colors - or bringing all our girly stuff for other people to try (like face masks) - but that sort of activity is really the exception.
My group of friends have what we call “Bitches and Beer”. Basically we all gather at someones house bring food and beer and, well bitch.
Well we just talk, have fun. Sometimes we play games, mostly we just hang out. It’s not something to overthink. Just combine good friends, good food, and good beer (or wine or whatever) and good times will follow.
And I am also not a girly girl. I spend a good chunk of my work week in a carpentry shop.
With lots of food and the beverages of your choice. I stick with diet soda, but I don’t judge. The food should be of the kind that most women call “evil.” (Call me crazy, but I don’t think food has moral value, at least as it relates to greasiness. It’s just food.)
And then just talk. My friend (who is about to drop twins in addition to a 4 year old and a 2 year old and desperately needed some time off) and I went out the other day and sat in Friendly’s for three hours. When we got home, my husband said, “What did you talk about?” You know, I had no idea. Best time I’d had in months.
ETA: I’m not a girly girl either. Shopping makes me homicidal, and pink ruffles make me sick to my stomach. But boy do I love to talk.
Take women, add wine and the rest will come naturally!
Our last “Girls’ Night Out” was a wine tasting at WineStyles, which was all kinds of awesome. I got to meet a friend of a friend who’s now one of my favorite people in the world. After a couple of hours tasting yummy inexpensive wines, we staggered out with our shopping bags full of said wines, put them in the trunk of the designated driver’s car, and then drunk dialed our husbands to come meet us for sushi down the street (which we sort of walk/skipped to while singing “Good Morning, Sunshine” at 7 PM on a Thursday in the middle of winter.) But we had a lot of fun and a lot of sushi. (Apparently sushi never looks like enough on the menu when you’re drunk. We ordered a LOT of sushi!)
Our last Girl’s Night In was more of an afternoon, and we made some herbal cough syrup, skin salve and lip balm. While our herbs were doing their kitchen thing, we hung out, drank wine, and worked on various beading/sewing/crosstitching projects while Blue_Kangaroo tried to figure out how I’d dragged her into this crazy coven of witchy herbalist weirdos!
So do whatever you and your friends like. The only thing that makes it “Girls’ Night” is that there are girls! You know what I’d love to do with you, Opal? Paint stuff. I’m an absolute *shite *painter, but I’d love to hang out with you and some women and use up some of your scrap paint (if there is such a thing) and just talk and drink wine and hang out while you did…whatever it is you feel like doing. I’d make us a fondue and **Nava **would bring the wine and Blue_Kangaroo can bring some papers to grade and pretend like she’ll actually get them done. Maybe **dangermom **will bring some material to cut out patterns for some dresses for her daughters and then you and nyctea scandiaca can draw really cool designs on our faces with eyeliner! There - that’s my imaginary Doper Girls’ Night In. (And of course, the first rule of Girls’ Night In is “the more, the merrier”, so everyone I didn’t mention is invited too, of course!)
My two closest friends and I have a girl meetup fairly often. It is sometimes an afternoon, sometimes a day, sometimes longer. Hardly ever a “night out”, though.
The afternoon ones are when we meet about once a month on a Saturday afternoon and drag out all our knitting, sewing, embroidery, and beading projects that have been lying around unfinished and work on them.
The couple-of-days ones are usually when our 3 husbands, who all have the same hobby, go to a hobby convention. We go along. They spend all day at the con, and the 3 of us spend all day antiquing, sewing/beading/etc, drinking beers, and (if the weather permits), lying by the pool and eyeing the young hunks. In the evenings we order pizza or Chinese, or go out for dinner. After that we watch movies or just gab.
Every so often we go somewhere together that isn’t one of our husband’s conventions. Two summers ago we spent a long weekend on the outer banks - rented a condo.
Feb 26th we are all 3 going down to Williamsburg for a couple of days. There’s a quilt show going on, and some antiquing we want to do.
What we call “antiquing” is visiting all the antique stores and second hand junk shops we can find and wandering around slowly while yakking about everything. We never actually buy antiques.
There’s an artist colony kind of deal in Paducah, KY that’s supposed to be really good. I’ve wanted to go down there with my husband’s ex-wife. Both of us are artists and we love to just soak it all in.
Yeah, pretty much food and talk, possibly entertainment which mostly gets ignored. In the summer we’ll use a birthday as an excuse to go get an ice-cream cone and spend two hours talking; I guess that’s a girls’ night out at its most basic.
I don’t think I’ve ever planned an official Girls’ Night Out (or In), but I suppose it’s come to that when our gay male fgriends couldn’t make it. As others have mentioned, it usually involves an intoxicant and the airing of grievances (mostly re: work, current events and relationships). My friends aren’t the type to trash an entire gender, though, and many don’t date, so rather than going on about their SOs it’s more ‘Why can’t I get laid?’ ‘I’m having trouble with this guy because [blank]’ or a big game of Truth (vs. Truth or Dare) where we exchange embarrassing or hot stories.
If so many girls here aren’t ‘girlie,’ perhaps it needs a new definition…
Yeah, the name conjurs up images of tickle fights and putting each other’s bras in the freezer, but it’s really not anything like that. That’s why we invite the brother in law. He’s a stand-in for his deceased wife. We never really made it about girlie stuff.
I believe that at some point in the evening it is mandatory that everyone grabs a prop microphone and sings along to an old soul song from the '60s…at least that’s what they always do in the movies.
karaoke
House parties
crazy adventures around Montreal
concerts (lots of concerts, actually)
shopping for music
Friends from law school:
house parties…where we’d cook and then watch movies
game nights
**my sister **(my best friend…though we had a gigantic falling out at christmas):
travel
shopping
I’ve always had more female friends, so I guess I never thought of them as girls night out. I have yet to spend an evening sipping wine and complaining about husbands/boyfriends. In college it was mostly about music, in law school it was about law school gossip and debates over legal issues and with my sister it’s about our parents, travel destinations, clothes, makeup and photography/other mutual hobbies.
All of my gettogethers these days are co-ed, but I only had female friends when I was young…don’t know why that is.
From the OP: “I should note that this would be at my house, not a “girls’ night OUT”” and that the thread title does not say “girls night out” anywhere in it. I’m specifically looking for things that don’t involve going out.
Some girlfriends & I used to do a girls night in where the theme was more or less to mimic a teenage girl sleepover, but with our own booze instead of the stuff we stole from our parents. Everyone has to bring their PJ’s, wine, makeup, curling irons, and other beauty supplies & movies.
We’d watch movies our men would gag to see, drink oodles of wine, and makeover each other & take silly pictures. Due to the amount of wine we’d drink, it usually really was a sleepover & at least 2 or 3 of the group of 6 to 8 of us would crash at the hosts house. It was quite fun.