It's not too often that I'm invited to events, let alone ones that are a secret and require your address to send you a physical invitation. In fact, that's never happened in all the years that I've been blogging! When the invite arrived in the mail a few days later after expressing my interest, my curiousity was piqued further still. The enveloped contained a plain black card, and a miniature light. After inspection, the card wasn't plain at all, but actually had writing that showed up under UV light. The secret event turned out to be glow in the dark bingo! I for one was excited about the prospect, partly because I hadn't ever played bingo before (yes, I know, but it turned out that I wasn't the only one!) and partly because it was to be held in one of my favourite venues, Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen. The evening rolled around, and I met up with Jenna and Kariss to make our way to my first bingo game!





The event was hosted by Ladbrokes, and the first floor bar had been transformed into a UV delight. There were jars filled with tonic water (I had no idea that it glowed in the dark!), UV confetti on the floor, fairy lights to bring a bit of sparkle, and even the balloons, bingo balls, pens and bingo cards glowed in the dark too. The organisers had really gone to town, and the room looked great. Set up on a table to one side were all the prizes that could be won during the games. I have to admit that I had my eye on the Pandora bag, and the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 camera - I was determined to win something! It turned out that to win the camera, there would be an Instagram competition running throughout the evening using the hashtag #LetsGlow, and the best image uploaded would win. There were some other fantastic prizes too, such as Soap & Glory gift sets, a Betty's hamper and some Lush products.






The event started at 6pm, and the first bingo game was due to start at 7pm. This first hour was dedicated to face and nail painting, by Tiger Tiger and Rosie Powers respectively. Seeing as I never manage to get my nails done at a blog event, I made sure that I had a place in the queue! I decided to go for classic UV yellow - what else would it be?! - and I was pleased to discover that they matched the pen that I was using for the evening too. I decided against having my face painted as I didn't want to receive funny looks on the way home. However, as you can see from the above photo, Lucy had her face painted and it looked amazing! I was watching it being done, and it astounded me how talented Stephanie is; she made it look so easy and everyone had a different awesome design.



After having my nails done and catching up with fellow bloggers, it was time to play! Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I had never played bingo before and as the game progressed, I quickly fell behind. The seasoned bingo players were getting fed up of us non-players shouting at the bingo caller to slow down! However, a couple of games in Lucy was kind enough to point out that the numbers on the card were listed in numerical order in the columns, and after that I was playing like a pro. There was definitely some fierce competition once everyone was up to speed, and at one point there was a stand off between Rebecca and another blogger to win a prize! I still wasn't good enough to win any prizes, even after Lucy's life saving tip, but it was brilliant fun all the same. In fact, we had so much fun, that some of us bloggers may even get together for a regular bingo session in the future!




We stopped to take a break, at which point there was lots of pizza from Dough Boys for us all to chow down on. I had three or four slices, all different and sadly I have no idea what they were, but I can tell you that they were all absolutely fantastic. I've had Dough Boys pizza at a blog event before, and it's easily some of the best pizza I've ever eaten - no word of a lie. There was also some "Session Fries" from Patty Smith's, and they did a good job of blowing everyone's head off due to the Sriracha mayonnaise and pickled chillies! To finish off, I had a bingo-themed cupcake and washed the whole lot down with two beers, from Beavertown and Vocation Brewery. We were provided with four drinks tokens, which was fantastic as I was able to try some new beers from Belgrave's excellent selection.



Soon enough, the bingo games were over and it was time to go home. However, there was one more prize to be given away - the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 that I had my eye on. I had taken many pictures on my Canon G7X and uploaded them to Instagram, in the hope that one of them may be good enough. Imagine my surprise when it was announced that one of my pictures had won!! As you can see from my silly picture, I was extremely happy to have won and I still can't quite believe it. The image on the left is the one that won me the camera, which was actually the first picture I uploaded - of the drinks tokens that I received. I absolutely love my new camera, and have used it several times since the event - if you check out my Instagram page, you'll be able to see a few shots that I have taken with it. This prize was just the icing on the cake of a great event, and I can say with 100% honesty that it was one of the most fun events I've ever been to. It was unlike any other event I've been to, and we all left with smiles on our faces! For more pictures from the event, check out the Ladbrokes Bingo post, where you may spot a sneaky photo of yours truly. Thank you Ladbrokes and Sense PR for a fantastic evening!