Tag: memories

Hotel Party

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Whachu doin’?
Nothing chillin’ at the Holidae In
Who you wit?
Me and my peeps, won’t you bring four of your friends
What we gon’ do?
Feel on each other and sip on some Hen
One thing leading to another let the party begin- Chingy 

I’m going to be honest, there were like 5 different choices of lyrics that I wanted to use and it was super hard for me to pick, but I’m proud of my choice.

When I was younger, in my tween ages, birthday parties were all the rage. Especially birthdays that made you feel older. Whether it was a boy/girl party or a spa day, the most epic of the choices was the hotel party!

Hotel Party Definition:  a group of 8-14 of your closest girlfriends and you pile into a hotel room, swim at the pool, order room service, jump on the beds, dance in your pjs, stay up way too late and usually talk about boys and the biggest current trends in pop culture. It’s basically just a party in a hotel.

Hotel parties didn’t just come around for birthday parties, we also did them for class trips and other events. Those were an even bigger thrill because it felt like we were breaking the rules and having too much fun during school. Plus you got to use the phone to talk to the other hotel rooms. Oh man if your crush was on the other line, that story lasted for the next month.

1. Hotel party with my cousins at age 13        2. Birthday getaway with friends at age 16

I only have positive memories from my hotel parties growing up. They actually pretty vivid in my mind still. So when I recently had an opportunity to go to a wedding in New York with a bunch of my college friends, the idea of sharing a hotel, had all those memories rushing back to me.

We got to the hotel and it was 6 of us staying in the room. First big change from being kid, there were boys staying in our room!  If I was 12, could you imagine the freak out! Well I’m 27 now, and these guys are some of my oldest friends, so the excitement was much different then it would have been back then.

This was also a mini reunion. Some of these people I hadn’t seen in 6 years. So that added another element of fun! Some things were totally the same as back in the day, like jumping around on the beds, dancing to music, even the same music! The Backstreet Boys forever! Everything in the beginning was super fun! Also there was endless drinking, which always makes things more exciting, amiright??

 

After the wedding, and the after party and the after after party, it was time to retire back to the room.  I decided in my drunken state, to be nice and sleep on the floor since we have a full room. Big mistake for my future hungover self. My back hurt so bad the next day! I seriously have no idea how we fit all of those kids in one room when I was younger. Six was for sure our limit in this room. Also waking up in a room with a bunch of people, when all you want is to be by yourself in your own room sleeping the day away, it’s a little rough to keep the smile on your face. Luckily, I love all these people and being with them was nonstop fun so that feeling was lost pretty quickly.

                                                 Hotel Party for Wedding, age 27

One other con, is that we had to pay with our own money for the room. Man I miss my free ride a.k.a childhood.  Admittedly, it only cost us about $40 each since so many of us were sharing the room. So like no big deal, but still.

So does it still hold up??

Here’s the thing. Doing anything with your friends that seems like a vacation is fun. A break from life is the best. Though, as you get older, things aren’t always as easy breezy as they were when you were a kid. I would recommend, that you only do a hotel party with the amount of people who can fit in the beds comfortably because the floor isn’t what is use to be. Also bring a lot of aspirin for the next morning. Planning ahead is super important in these situations because there is only ONE BATHROOM. I think that’s something people always forget.

It’s funny because when you are a kid, you want to do so many “adult things” to seem cool. And then once you actually get to the point of doing these things, some are just as you pictured they would be. Hotel Parties are awesome! Do yourself a favor, and the next time you think you need a vacation but feel like you can’t afford a real one, just get a hotel in the town over with a few friends. Then have a relaxing night in, full of dancing, jumping and laughing because you’ll get the battery recharge you need. I promise you that!

So if you wanna come to my hotel
All you gotta do is holla at me
We still havin a after-party
Checkin out six in the mornin- Cassidy feat. R. Kelly

Had to sneak one more in, sorry!

Disposable Cameras

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One of the most nostalgic things of the 90’s and early 00’s was capturing your memories with a yellow or green throw away camera that held 24 pictures each. If you were a girl on her way to a dance, you made it your most important accessory. You kept in your bra until the lens became so fuzzy from the sweat of dancing the night away, that all your end pictures looked like they were taken by a fog machine. Or maybe you just used it for a night in with your friends dressing up in weird clothes, having a hilarious fashion show that made you laugh until it hurt. I mean I can only speak from my our experiences but no matter what you did, it was an amazing way to keep the memories alive forever.

Before the era of instant gratification, these cameras helped you really lived in the moment more than ever. Every event that you brought your disposable camera to, you knew those memories would have more meaning and last forever. Say you went to Prom. Most of the time, those nights you were on a life high and loving every minute of the music and fun and laughs. When the night was getting close to the end, you prayed that they would play “just one more song”. You usually had a sleepover with all your friends and talked about your favorite moments or all the drama and just slept with a smile on your face that night. The next morning, you rushed to Walgreens or CVS and did the one hour photo. God’s greatest gift to any fun loving teenager. You would go back and get them as fast as you could. You would look through the pictures for hours with your friends. You would bring them to school that week and the memories would last until the next major event. It was a small form of time travel in a weird way. I was always the “photographer” of my group of friends so my bedroom walls were covered in pictures from top to bottom. I loved these cameras! I honestly wonder how much money I spent on all of them… Actually, I don’t want to know.

Years 2002-2006. Prime disposable camera time period. Double chins and “I think I blinked” moments were very much alive

Recently, I got some of my pictures developed from throw away cameras, I bought/ was gifted as sort of a fun nostalgic thing. WHOA BABY! Those things aren’t cheap nowadays. You have to have them sent out and you don’t usually get them back for 2 weeks. I got five cameras developed and it cost me $78. That’s insane right? To pay that much money for something that you don’t even know how good or bad the pictures turned out! But I did it. It’s lost some of the magic from all the hoops you had to jump through to get the pictures. It’s not something I could do every week like I use to. I gotta say, the pictures were still fun to look through but only half of them, I would want to share the world. But all the pictures do have a built in filter so I’m half way there to my perfect Instagram post! Also, some of the cameras come with themes now such as “party” or “cats” which means that pictures with have fun designs or boarders or random shapes throughout them. I obviously got the cat themed one. And it was pretty worth it. Some of these cameras are like 4 years old, so it was fun to figure out what night the pictures were from. Like my own little mystery. The biggest problem I would say, is your selfie game is a little rough. About 87% of the time, someone will have a double chin. And you have no idea because you can’t see it and you also don’t think to maybe take a second for safety because you don’t want to waste film. So if you want to feel super great about yourself, disposable cameras might not be for you. If you do get the party started and you bring your throw away along for the adventure, people will get very excited and pose all night with you. Also it’s a great ice breaker. It’s a reminder that you should capture all moments and not just the ones that you can on your phone. It’s all a surprise! Plus they last a lot longer than a night and usually have 4 or 5 event on them which is more organic. Even more than before since it’s no longer second nature.

So does it still hold up? I would say yes and no. It’s lost some of it’s magic and it’s a lot more work than it use to be but it’s still a surprise and there are always some in the batch that will make you smile. So I recommend doing this like once or twice a year because some memories should last forever and when they are printed that seems more likely. Plus it gives you a break from technology like the good ‘ol days. And the pictures are usually super candid which makes far more interesting. So get out there and snap away! Don’t forget to say cheese!

Years 2013-2016. Prime time for longing for past. Hashtag no filter needed.