This is a barely organized list of various ways to have fun. For more ways, check out EntertainingSpace.
Body fun
Play with your perceptions:
- Drink a few glasses of apple juice before going to bed to have lucid dreams.
- To have vivid hallucinations, tape two halves of a ping-pong ball to your eyes and then stare at a red light while listening to radio static.
Turn your skin blue by eating many blue M&Ms, or orange by eating plenty of carrots.
Get a designer tan by painting nail polish on your skin, staying in the sun all day, and removing the nail polish afterward.
Bug spray and rubbing alcohol have such a low flash point that they won’t burn your hand when you light them.
Make rainbow nails:
- Put water in a bowl.
- Drop random colors of nail polish in it.
- Stir it with a toothpick.
- Apply petroleum jelly to the skin around your fingernails.
- Place your nails in the bowl.
Make a temporary tattoo that lasts about a month:
- Draw on your skin with a sharpie.
- Rub baby powder on it.
- Cover it in hairspray.
Games
Try classic games:
- Try ancient board games like chess, checkers, or backgammon.
- Play popular board games like Monopoly, Scrabble, or Clue.
- Look out for esoteric board games like Go, Japanese Chess, or Settlers of Catan.
- Learn card games with a standard 52-card deck, like poker or rummy.
- Try other types of card decks like Spanish decks or Mahjong.
- Make a cardholder with a foam egg carton.
- Learn dominoes, either double six or twelve.
- Get proprietary card decks, like Dominion or BANG!
- Learn to play ping pong.
- If the ball is dented, hold a lighter near the ball or place it in boiling water.
Invent new rules for your games:
- Try making “house rules” that add or remove restrictions.
- Remix board games by combining multiple games or changing out elements.
- Replace Guess Who? pictures with family and family friends’ pictures.
- Write instructions on a Jenga game and make rules to perform when pulled.
Invent new games altogether:
- Tape popsicle sticks to paper plates to play Balloon Ping-Pong.
- Make volleyball billiards with barriers and wastebaskets.
- If you have a ball, you have endless possibilities outdoors.
If you’re playing games on your phone, set it to airplane mode to avoid advertisements.
Tape your mobile device to a steering wheel cover to play driving games.
Learn to juggle.
If you trust your memory, learn to count cards.
Even if you’re an adult, you’re never too old to organize a game of Capture the Flag or Tag.
Holiday fun
Celebrate April Fool’s Day with pranks:
- Tease your friends and family:
- Paint a bar of soap with clear nail polish to keep it from lathering.
- Cut out a spider and put it underneath a lampshade to create a silhouette.
- Replace deodorant with cream cheese.
- Replace fancy soap with a block of fancy cheese.
- Tape an air horn under someone’s seat or behind a door.
- Reply to late-night Snapchat selfies with “what the f*** is behind you!?”
- Freeze Mentos inside ice cubes, then drop them into Diet Coke while serving.
- Mix M&M’s, Reese’s Pieces, and Skittles in a bowl.
- Play pranks at your workplace:
- Put a veggie tray on an office break room table inside a cake or doughnut box.
- Replace a phone handle with a banana.
- Put scotch tape on the bottom of a computer mouse.
- Only play pranks on friends who’ll enjoy the joke:
- Give a jewelry box to someone with a note that says, JUST KIDDING!
- Coat a raw egg with chocolate to make it look like a candy egg.
- Carefully place an air freshener can’s label over fish-scented bait spray.
- Replace hand sanitizer with personal lubricant.
- Replace one caramel apple in a set of them with an onion.
- Lightly prank strangers:
- Wear sunglasses, sit in a car with the window down, and aim a hairdryer at people as they drive by like a radar gun.
- If anyone parks across two spots, draw “new lines” on each side of the car and mark it as “IDIOT PARKING”.
- Play pranks on animals:
- Feed apples to a cow to get it drunk.
- Feed a dog peanut butter.
- Put masking tape on a cat or guide it with a laser pointer.
Make easy, fun Halloween costumes:
- Write on white shirts:
- 404 ERROR: COSTUME NOT FOUND
- This is my costume, and it’s scary how broke I am
- This Invisible Man costume is defective!
- Break open a glow stick and add it to clear nail polish to make glow-in-the-dark nails.
- To make a costume eyehole:
- Create a patch.
- Cry.
- Apply the patch with LashGrip.
- Hide the edges.
- Apply makeup to make the eye look irritated.
- Put gory blood all over it.
Celebrate Christmas:
- Decorate everything, including your ceiling.
- Have a Secret Santa or White Elephant gift exchange.
- Go Christmas light-watching.
Useful fun
Learn to throw a football and Frisbee correctly:
- Throw the ball by stepping with your opposite foot to turn your arm into a whip.
- Whip the Frisbee like whipping a towel.
Learn how to whistle through your fingers or tie an Ian Knot shoelace.
Practice mastering illusions:
- Learn card tricks.
- Find out how magic tricks work.
- Try fire breathing with powdered cornstarch.
Buy a world map or periodic table shower curtain to learn while you’re in the shower.
Make a personal goal to read through a certain number of books in a year.
Learn to play a musical instrument like a guitar or accordion.
- Attach a pen with a rubber band to a guitar to make a capo.
Learn tap dancing by gluing pennies to a pair of shoes.
Learn to navigate only by sight, landmarks, and the sky.
Predict the weather without any technology.
Use an advanced text editor like vim.
Learn to swim, or learn new strokes.
Learn a new language.
Fun projects
Tailor and adjust clothes:
- Trim constricting parts of clothing that won’t fit anymore to make a more open outfit.
- Tie and fold a long-sleeved shirt into a skirt.
- Glue remnants onto bows and trim them into an outfit.
- Convert oversized clothing into dresses.
- Make a tie-dye shirt:
- Tie up a white shirt into a ball with rubber bands.
- Squirt food coloring onto different areas of the shirt.
- Let it dry.
- Sew old shirts together to make a quilt.
- Use Kool-Aid mixed with vinegar to make clothing dye.
Make a bracelet by interlacing golden nuts with twine.
Color each fan blade of a standing fan a different primary color to make a rainbow-like effect when it’s turned on.
Set your web browser’s home page to Wikipedia’s “Random Article” page to learn something new every time you open your browser window.
Take pictures of your friends with their faces smashed against a glass and set it as their default picture or wallpaper.
Make a custom phone dock out of LEGO or other toy building materials.
Make a keyholder out of LEGO blocks, with key rings secured inside LEGO with holes in them.
Create a homemade calendar with paint samples, a frame, and dry-erase markers.
Embellish a plain phone case with permanent markers.
Make a Swedish Flame (where the fire burns inside a log):
- Cut a log like cutting a circular cake.
- Leave about six inches at the base.
- Throw about half a cap of fuel oil into the middle.
- The fire will burn for two or three hours.
Make a small swimming pool by putting a plastic lining in a truck bed and filling it with water.
Dip a balloon in wax, let it harden, and remove the balloon to create a wax bowl.
Businesses that have fun
Many places give free stuff on certain days:
- Most food establishments give you free food for your birthday.
- Dairy Queen offers free ice cream every 31st of the month.
- IHOP has free pancakes every February 28th.
- 7-11 gives a free Slurpee on July 11th.
- Chipotle on Halloween sells a cheap burrito to anyone with a costume.
- Krispy Kreme offers a free doughnut for talking like a pirate on September 19th (Talk Like a Pirate Day) and a free dozen for dressing like one.
- Krispy Kreme will also give away a free glazed doughnut on March 9th.
Many companies have hidden secrets:
- At Disneyland, yell, “Andy’s coming!” to see all the Toy Story actors fall to the ground wherever they are.
- Call Domino’s Pizza at 1-734-930-3030.
- Call Papa Johns at 1-877-547-7272.
- Call Pizza Hut at 1-800-948-8488.
- Ask for a Puppucino with your dog at Starbucks to get a bowl of cream for them.
- If you happen to break a Nalgene water bottle and send it in, they’ll replace it with a shirt that says, “I broke a Nalgene”.
- There is a hotline called “Callin’ Oates” at 719-266-2837 (719-26-OATES) that plays Hall & Oates songs when you call.
Consider buying some fun consumer products:
- There is an umbrella that looks like a shower head and blasts air to protect you.
- Some power outlets can fit a dozen plugs and eliminate the need for a power strip.
- Lock entrance or bedroom doors in houses with a fingerprint scanner.
- Anti-tangle earbuds have cords that zip up.
- Some wall power outlets come with USB ports built into them.
- Desk hammocks let someone rest their feet under a desk.
- You can send any mobile device to a service to waterproof it.
- Some camping tents have enclosed hammocks.
- Some key rings are made to find your phone, and vice versa.
- Use semi-transparent sticky notes to write things that blend into where you set them.
- Some chandeliers can make a room look like a shadowy forest.
- Some nightlight lamps have detachable glow balls for trips to the bathroom.
Other fun ideas
Light a dandelion on fire to see a rainbow fireball.
Put two peeps on a paper plate with toothpicks in each of them facing each other, and they will duel when you put them in the microwave.
Blow bubbles in weather under freezing to make the bubbles turn into ice bubbles.
Mix one part water, one part corn syrup, and two parts dish soap to make bubbles you can’t pop.
Take vertical panoramas with your phone by turning it sideways.
Make a water fountain in the sink with a shot glass.
Candles that smoke after blowing out are actually blowing wax, and lighting the smoke quick enough will spark the candle back up again.
Attach a book to a retracting dog leash to read in the bathtub.
Keep a small water gun on hot days and spray dogs as you see them (assuming the owners don’t mind).