This month Action for Happiness are encouraging you to get active, get outdoors and take care of your body!  Let's reap the benefits of getting our bodies moving and breathing more deeply as a result of exercising, laughing and even singing! We don't all need to run marathons - there are simple things we can all do to take care of our bodies - for example unplugging from technology, getting outside and - importantly - making sure we get enough sleep!

International evenings
For a family and friends outside international evening, choose a country and a menu. Dress up and decorate the table or make it a picnic? Mix cocktails and make food, listen to music, and dance, and you could turn your garden into an outdoor cinema if you have a laptop and good wifi  – all in the tradition of the country you are celebrating! Every decoration and costume has to be made from things you already have in the house/garden. How about Cuba, France, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Hawaii, Ethiopia, Scotland or Mexico? It can bring a lot of laughter for all of the family and family/friends who can visit your garden. 

What about making friendship bracelets or creating fairy/wizard doors for the local woodland?

If your children want to make a difference in their community. Make friendship bracelets and deliver to those who need a pick-me-up right now. You could also create fairy/wizard doors in clay/old wood, and pop them in your local area for others to enjoy. It does provide little ones with a magical fairy wood in your local area. They could even design fairy pictures too, so fairy hunts could be popular in Chineham! 

Rooms with a View For your Immediate Family
How about hosting an evening of “Around the World in Six Rooms” where each family member chose a room of the house and their favourite country. During a couple of nights preceding, get crafty, chose food and drinks and put together playlists of themed music. Saturday night rolled around and fly from a beach party in Hawaii, with flower leis and mini burgers, to a jazz bar next to the Eiffel Tower, eating eclairs and holding silly moustaches on sticks to your faces in France. You could also get creative for the “flights” between countries – conga lines and swooping planes could be favourites!

Plan a Themed Day

The key ingredients of a Themed Day are fancy dress, a themed lunch and some fun activities. Also try to throw in a relevant movie/programme for minutes/hours of down time. Pinterest is your friend here. Some nice ideas for themed days are;

• Pirate Day
• Fairy Day
• Frozen Day
• Dinosaur Day
• A Day at the Beach
• Mexican Day
• Fairytale Day
• Under the Sea