A great night in with the girls

It’s not easy fitting a social life around the kids, but if you don’t make the effort it’s hard to keep in touch with even the closest of friends. Right now, you might feel like you don’t need anything more in your life than your partner and your kids, but that’s being short-sighted. Pretty soon, your children will start to have their own social lives (ok, if they’re babies this may be a while off yet, but it will happen eventually) and you don’t want to have lost the connection you’ve had with lifelong friends simply because you can’t make time for them now.

One way to make it easier to be social is to get friends to come over for the evening – or fix up a rota so that you go to each other’s houses. This takes the pressure off having to dress up for a night out, and you’ll also end up spending a lot less money on the time spent together, which is always a bonus.

So what to do for a night ‘in’ with the girls? There are lots of options, of course, but online bingo is an easy, fun and value for money choice.

We’ve all seen the TV ads for bingo sites like Jackpotjoy and Foxy Bingo, and there are hundreds more to choose from online, including big brand names like Mirror Bingo and Gala Bingo. If you sign up to play bingo at Mirrorbingo.com, not only do you get a 300% bonus when you put £10 into an account, but you also get access to free games on the schedule. You and your friends can get together for a bingo night; with everyone bringing their phone or tablet along so you can all play the same games together at once.

Fun nights in to save money.

When you have kids, you don’t always have as much disposable cash as you did when you were young, free and single, so big nights out become rarities, things that you plan months in advance and look forward to, rather than weekly events.

But staying in all the time watching TV can become a little tiresome, especially if you’ve got those well-behaved kiddies tucked up in bed by 7pm and therefore time on your hands. The good news is that there’s a compromise to not going out – you can have some cheap and cheerful nights in with your friends.

It’s a lot easier than getting dressed up for a night out, booking taxis and paying for meals and nights in can be just as much fun as going out, as long as you have some activities planned. It’s often also easier to have a decent conversation if you’re in a house than if you are in a noisy bar or pub, so it gives you a great chance to catch up with your pals.

So what to do on a cheap night in? Here are just a few suggestions.

Online bingo

One way to have fun in a group is to get everyone to bring along their tablet or smartphone so that you can all sign in to the same bingo site and play a few rounds of bingo together. All the sites like Winner, Cheeky Bingo and Sky Bingo have round-the-clock schedules packed full of games. At Winner bingo, bingo games are available in a number of different rooms and each room has its own unique atmosphere. 

Family night in.

With Lee busy working lots of late nights and overtime lately Bug has been missing his daddy a lot.  Bug has not been very happy about seeing so little of his daddy.  As Bug is dearly missing his daddy when Lee is not working we are making most of the little amount of free time we have together.  Even though it is hard with Lee working so much lately, especially with Bug missing him so much and Bug and I being stuck at home as we only have 1 car and live miles away from public transport, when Lee is home we are now getting quality time together, making the most of what little time off he has.

A few days ago Lee had a little time off so we jumped at the chance of spending some much needed time together.  As Lee is shattered from working so hard we decided to have a lazy few hours together at home and enjoy a family night in and watch a film together.

I let Bug chose what film he wanted us to watch as a family.  After looking at a number of the choices I offered him he ended up picking a DVD that his Aunty Boo recently gave him, Alvin and the Chipmunks.