Maggie, There are several companies that make the murder mystery parties. I like Murders by Vincent, BePuzzeled, or a la carte. They seem to be the easiest to use. They come with complete instructions on what and when to do things. The last one I did was called Chinese Takeout(I got it on ebay) and I did just like it said. I got chinese takeout. I sent a menu from the local chinese restaraunt and everyone told me what they wanted. I got lunch portions because they are large enough for dinner. I prepared the appetizers except for the egg rolls they were included in lunch. For desert I served bananas and strawberries with strawberry gel on top and brownies just like at our local chinese buffet. Once I decided what game I wanted to play I looked over the suspects and assigned charactures from there. When you send out the invitations you let each person know who they are and the invitations have a brief descritption of each character and what they would dress like, along with a story line giving city, year that kind of stuff. Your guests do not HAVE to dress in character but it does make it more fun. My husband was the chef, so we borrowed a chefs jacket and I was the long lost daughter of the woman who was murdered. My character was very excentric and didnt like things that matched...how easy was that. When the guests arrived as appitizers are being served with coctails everyone is given a script ( almost like a little brouchure). It tells you more about your character and tells you how to play the game. Normally in part 1 that is done over appetizers and it will tell you what to disclose and what not to tell, it will also guide you to ask questions of other people there. If everyone is new and has never played this before it does not hurt to ask if everyone has told everything they need to before you go to the next part ( or Act) and course throughout dinner. I normally try to do appitizer, dinner, dessert & coffee. Just remember that if you do one of these, that if everyone you invited does not show up ...you cant play unless they are a non suspect. The game we are doing on newyears eve I have one guest that is very very shy and wants to come but is not real sure how much they will participate so I am making him a non suspect that way he will participate as much as he wants. The best part of these parties is the party favors......I love that part. I found some small wedding photo albums at the $ store and bubbles, and with elvis being there I also had to get the new reese cups that have peanut butter and banana and a picture of Elvis on the front...I hope I didnt go on to long and I hope this was not too confusing...its been a long day and if I didnt answer all you questions let me know. Oh one thing I forgot you can buy these games at target they are about 25.00 but if you "WIN" (that makes me crazy) one ebay they are usually pretty reasonable. Donna

Fran, Only 2 years......and that's only the top! lol Judy, Thank you.....would love to see your chocolate sampler pattern sometime. I did some meandering on the Fish Panel quilt......really need to practice to become more comfortable with it. Thank you, Rosa. I'm one to really like to see what a quilt will look like before starting it, but, it does make one branch out into doing things we would never do on our own. SharonG/FL

Lois says.......... How was the mystery presented? Did you just have to make x number of certain blocks and the way in which they were assembled was up to you? Yes. You're told how many sub assembly blocks to make and from what colour run. This isn't done all at once, but revealed a bit each day. When all the 2 inch and six inch blocks are finally made ahead of time, they have a grand reveal and tell you how to put them together into a certain number of twelve inch blocks. I didn't pick up on them suggesting any particular way to assemble these blocks, and always.... reserve that for my own discretion anyway. In this case you were told to use twenty different light and same amount of dark fabrics to make each block different. I did it on faith, and was clueless where they were going with it, so therefore really unable to either come up with a colour scheme or even if I did, don't know if I had enough stash to coordinate it anyway, so I just took it on faith and hoped I'd like it. I loved the pattern choice, but think all the wild combinations don't do it justice. But, it was fun, anyway. Glad I did it.

Sharon, sister’s colours were much different. Do you remember a number of yeas ago when women classified themselves as winter, spring etc. to determine what colours they should wear? I was a spring so most of my fabric choices and therefore quilts are in the pastel range. Marilyn was an autumn so she chooses lovely fabrics in the brown, grey/ blue families. And her quilts are gorgeous. It would have been more fun to be sewing in the same room but alas she was 200 miles away. We do a lot of email sharing. I found the pictures of that mystery we did in 2013 and you can see how the three of us went different ways. Mine was blue/yellow (surprise), Linda did civil war fabrics and Calliope did a scrap version. I miss those ladies! Theresa