Community Socials

Have you ever wanted to set up an aquarium in your community? Get your residents involved in setting it up and participating in the process. How to choose a saltwater or freshwater tank? The first decision you’ll need to make is whether you want a freshwater or saltwater tank. To help you make a decision, you can buy (or borrow from your local library) a book like Aquariums: The Complete Guide to Freshwater and Saltwater Aquariums. After you’ve made up your mind about what type of tank environment you want, you can decide size, placement, fish, décor, and your daily maintenance schedule. Getting residents involved In addition to helping make decisions about what type of fish to include, you can involve residents in polls to determine tank size, placement,...

Light sticks and glow sticks were originally developed for military, police, fire, and EMS use. But there are plenty of other fun ways to use them. Now we can use glow sticks for events like parties, festivals, pool play, and even making paths in the dark. Plan a glow party for your community, dim the lights, and have a glowing great time! Glowstringing Where to find them? You can purchase glow sticks from most dollar stores and major retailers, but bulk quantities for a large community event you’ll want to purchase from a party-supply wholesaler. Glow Products and Glow Universe offer bulk discounts on large quantities of glow sticks for parties and other events. Online shops carry an assortment of glow stick...

Fortune cookie day – which always falls on Sept. 13th - is a silly, fun, and delicious holiday. Fortune cookies, those crisp thin folded cookies that usually contain a short note of wisdom or a vague life prediction, are always a fan favorite. Sometimes the cookie’s message also includes a Chinese phrase or even a string of lucky numbers that some use as lottery numbers. We have better ideas on this front, so read below! History of fortune cookies You may be surprised to learn fortune cookies as we know them today are a uniquely Western invention. Mostly found in America, fortune cookies are not a Chinese tradition at all. Some immigrant groups and businesses in California claim to have popularized this now common cookie in the early 20th century. However, others...

August 31st is National Trail Mix Day! What better way to celebrate than by putting together a tasty activity for residents. Trail mix is generally a high-energy and tasty treat. It’s perfect for post-workout refueling, for heading out for a walk on the trail, or just for everyday healthy snacking. There are three great ways to celebrate the holiday. You can build a trail mix bar for residents, hand out trail mix favors at the community entrance and other gates, or make it a potluck-style event! Build a trail mix bar More fun than pre-made packages is the ability to mix custom trail mixes yourself - right at a trail mix bar! Image source: Pinterest Here are some more trail mix...

The success/validity of this event will be highly dependent on your community and who your major demographics are for your complex. One thing we have learned is that you cant please everyone or get everyone to show up for one kind of event. This is why we have been hosting a variety of different events targeted at different age groups (everyone is allowed to join, but we wanted to mix things up and instead of making one general event, we make more focused events.) We do events for children, seniors, teens, etc. But the one event that had the largest turnout was our "Midnight Party" targeted at young adults. We opened up the pool at round 11 PM, had a DJ booth setup (sound system and all) with lots of food and drinks. There were Nachos, pizza, wings, fries and more. For drinks we had a variety...