Hen Night

Sooo. A DIY hen night. There will be 2 crafts involved in that evening: staying awake long enough for the children to go to bed and being able to mix cocktails. That's right, while the men go out to party us women will stay at home and have a girly night in.

The idea is as simple as it is practical - we will get all the cheesy movies out that we'd never normally get to watch, put on some gruesome face masks, paint nails and drink home-made cocktails.

I've spent the last 3 days putting together a list of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, making a shopping list, using a major supermarket chain to work out the estimated price and I am now slowly going around different shops to put together all the items at a reasonable cost. Any leftovers from the budget (at the moment around £250) can be used towards face mask ingredients and morning-after breakfast.

I'd recommend to everyone to learn the basics of EXCEL. Not only is it a brilliant program to organise lists, but it has also helped me keep track of our wedding budget and now the hen budget. You really don't need to be a genius to work it, after all, I've managed. The two price columns add up the cost of all the items (estimated and actual) for me and the box to the right of the table helps me keep track of how much money I have saved from the estimate. The box stays green so long as money is saved and goes red if I go over budget. Simple, really, and I've done something similar for the wedding, with the sheet counting up all our savings and deducting every bill from it.

As you may guess from the list, our cocktails include, among others, Pina Colada, Mojito, White Russian, Cuba Libre, Long Island Iced Tea as well as non-alcoholic Fireside Flamer, Cranberry Cutie and Chocolate Cocktail. My cocktail-mixing days have been a while, but I am sure you can't unlearn these things.