A fun pandemic-era celebration

1 October 2020

My birthday was last week. I’m a birthday person. I’ll tell anybody and everybody when it’s my birthday (it’s September 22) and I love a fuss being made. That doesn’t mean I want lots of gifts or even a party. But I do love having a special day.

So far in this pandemic, we’ve celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in April and my husband’s birthday in May and both celebrations were fairly subdued because of COVID. After six months of the pandemic, I knew I wanted more for my birthday.

Luckily for me, I’d heard about DFW Scavenger Hunt (DFWSH), a company that before the pandemic (if I understand correctly) ran in-person scavenger hunts, for team-building and private events, in the Dallas area. Obviously, the stay-at-home order made that impossible and they did a marvelous pivot. They started offering a stay-home scavenger hunt. When I heard about it back in July, I made a mental note and in August, I reached out to them.

September 22 was available and we easily set it up. On the big day, all the guests had to do was log in to the Zoom link Brandon from DFWSH had provided and he took it from there. There were several kinds of games, including finding items in our homes (we all were on one team) and solving word games and some trivia games. The whole thing lasted just over an hour.

We had so much fun! A couple of dozen people participated from around the country (and the world!) with friends and family from all parts of my life. Brandon had me fill out a survey about my interests and he created a custom experience with lots of references to my favorite things (like Hamilton, The Office, and American Ninja Warrior). There was much laughter. And that’s really what I was looking for. Brandon did a great job of emceeing.

I heartily recommend the experience. You can check out the Stay Home Scavenger Hunts. I just noticed they also have kids’ virtual hunts, as well as a Halloween virtual hunt and a Holiday virtual hunt! The price is very reasonable—for events like this they charge $12 per webcam. (My party was under $200.)

Tagged with: birthday, dfw scavenger hunt