valentine's day fun

so, i am posting this late as we were doing these fun activities at work and i didn't want anyone to do a quick google search and find the answers. 

my job is working in the healthcare industry.  and sometimes things can be stressful or things just get mundane.  so, i sometimes like to do fun activities for our employees to let them take a break from the stress or the dull of their day.  it first started out as just doing monthly newsletters i threw together on microsoft word.  it typically included new employees, local events, work news, etc.  and then on months that not much was 'news worthy' i would throw in a trivia quiz consisting of a few questions that went with that month (ie february was valentine's day trivia) and the first person with all of the correct answers would win some office swag like a mug or tote bag.  i got a lot of positive feedback on the trivia being fun and interesting.  so i thought "why not make it bigger and better!?"  and so came the february activities.

to start off, i created a bag with a lot of department swag.  (we give away swag at local races or are leftover extra gifts purchased for holidays)  and then i came up with my plan: we would do 5 weeks of activites.  each activity will last for one week except for the last week since that monday is the last monday of the month.  that monday i will be drawing the winner.  everyone has the opportunity to complete all 5 activities for the opportunity to get their name thrown in to a drawing.  the more activities you do, the more times your name will be in the drawing and will up your chances of winning the goody bag.

now the prize isn't anything special.  but i work with a lot of competitive people.  so, i knew at least a few people would compete every week to keep things interesting.

here are the activities & answers:

ACTIVITY 1: Hiding Hearts
i printed off 10 conversation hearts and numbered them 1-10 since some were repeat sayings.  i found these just by going on google and searching 'coversation hearts clipart' and then printing 10 of them.  i then took an afternoon before monday hiding those hearts around the office.  i stuck with common areas staying away from personal offices/desks/drawers/clinic rooms.  i wanted it to be fair without people disturbing other people's things.  i also hid a couple really hard.  (when you're stuck with mostly just hallways, you get creative) and then informed the staff that hearts were hidden and to send me the locations.  i literally had people going bonkers over these hearts.  i'm telling you, competitive.  anyone that found all 10 got their name in the drawing.

ACTIVITY 2: TRIVIA
i have made the mistake of just googling 'valentine's day trivia' and then using one website to pick questions and answers from making trivia super easy for staff on the newsletters.  i wanted this to be a little challenging as they have a whole week to complete it.  so instead of just 5 questions like normal, i chose about 15.  i also pulled questions/answers from various trivia sites so it wouldn't be so easy.  and i separated it in to categories - holiday, love and candy.  again, if they got the questions correct, they got their name thrown in to the drawing.  some people now having their name in the drawing twice..

the answers are:
1. hallmark
2. hamlet
3. 1537
4. false
5. nebraska & arizona
6. tomato
7. has the vein of love straight to the heart
8. bald eagel, laysan albatross, mute swan, scarlet macaw, whooping crane, california condor, atlantic puffin, black vulture, geese
9. eros
10. latin, italian, spanish and portuguese
11. $1.1 billion
12. sweets to the sweet
13. true
14. 10
15. jeopardy


ACTIVITY 3: CROSSWORD
this one isn't really hard.  i just googled 'valentine's day crossword' and picked one off the results.  i then just tried to fill in the answers as there wasn't an answer key that i found on the website.  since it was easy enough for me to come up with it, i decided to use it.  most of these activities i made a little challenging but i wanted to include some easy tasks so that everyone could participate even if they only had a few minutes to a full days worth of time to come up with answers or search for hearts..

ACTIVITY 4: WORD SEARCH
i made this one.  and i didn't want it to be easy.  i spend sometime on this awful website www.imgur.com and some of the comments are 'calm down satan' when people do something that's a bit extreme and i think it's hilarious.  but then after doing these activities, i feel like someone should tell me to 'calm down satan' everything doesn't have to be so hard..  but why make it easy!? (if you click on that website, be prepared to lose hours of your life just scrolling through the pictures and the comments.  it's what got me through my old telemarketing job..)

anyways, i just got on excell and i looked up romantic movie trivia and then i created my word search by putting one letter in each square so that they were all spaced out evenly.  i decided instead of using words, i would do a combination of trivia and word search.  in order to get the word to find, you need to first solve the trivia question.  satan? i know.  but i thought it could be fun and more challenging than just finding 20 words.  here's what i came up with.

ACTIVITY 5: WEAR RED
we have a dress code that the staff has to follow.  they can only wear 3 colors in scrubs.  but i figured since this last activity was on the last monday of the month, i needed to do something super easy and that everyone can participate in.  so, i chose for people to wear red.  they would still need to follow the policy on uniforms.  but could wear red in the following options: lipstick, nail polish, hairbow/clip/headband, necklace/bracelet/earrings and socks.  i had to personally see their red with them either sending me a photo or coming to my office.

on the last day, i drew a name out of the basket and that person was the winner.  the feedback was mixed.  but with mostly positive feedback.  the negatives were mostly about not having time to do the activities.  but i think i'll always have that regardless.  i just wanted to give our staff something fun to break up their day that they could tune out and have some fun with valentine's day.  i will probably repeat something similar to this later and have it go around a different holiday or theme.  we do other activities around christmas time.  and there will always be a few that take competitiveness to the next level.  but for the most part, i think this is a really fun experience everyone can choose to be a part of if they want to be.

what activities have you done that would be good for our staff??