A Charity Shop Find

A couple of weeks ago we were at a wedding, and found ourselves wandering the streets of Wells between the service and the party in the evening. Not one to resist a charity shop we popped into an Oxfam book shop and left again 10 mins later with a copy of 365 Reasons to Sit Down and Eat for the princely sum of £2.99. It's a recipe for every day of the year, some interesting, some intriguing
and some downright odd!

We certainly wouldn't religiously follow it every day - it would produce the most random of menus - and the first recipe we've tried was from September. (Yes, we were feeling rebellious that day, why do you ask?) It was a hit though - gnocchi with mushrooms in a white wine sauce. We were after a quick meal at the end of a day of DIY, so bought the gnocchi and just made the sauce to go with it. Not the healthiest of meals, but certainly rather tasty.

Read More

Life's a Game 3. Chronology

This year we're sharing with you our game of the month. These are all favourites from our collection, or ones we play with our friends.

March's game is Chronology

Another charity shop find, this months game takes a little more thinking about - though it is set out in such a way that even those with only a slight knowledge of history can take part and enjoy it. 

Unlike some of the games on our shelves, this one doesn't take long to explain or play, with a game taking around 30 mins. Each player starts with one card face up on the table, then everyone takes it in turns to be read a historical event. If you can correctly guess where this sits in the timeline of events you have in front of you then you get to add the card to your line. The first person to have a set of ten cards wins the game. 

Of course this means that the first round is not that hard - you just need to guess whether the event took place before or after the card you were given at the start. Once you have nine cards on the table, perhaps some of them grouped quite closely chronologically, guessing the location of the tenth can be quite a bit trickier. 

A lot of the cards are based in the last 200 years, but the dates do stretch all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians (everyone breaths a sigh of relief when asked was the building of the pyramids before or after WWII) and could involve the discovery of America, the first successful heart surgery, or the production of the first Barbie. There's no way you could know all the events in the set - but because you only need to know where it sits in history, not the dates themselves, there's always a chance for a guess. 

Good for when a game of Monopoly just seems too long, or for a change of pace from other board and card games, I wouldn't say this was the best game on our shelf, but we've played it multiple times with different groups of people and always seem to enjoy ourselves - and you can't say fairer than that.


p.s. The next challenge in The Great Swift Bake Off is approaching. This month two dozen biscuits are the order of the day. We'll open Mr Linky next Wednesday - what will you make?

Read More

Life's a Game: 2. Go

This year we're sharing with you our game of the month. These are all favourites from our collection, or ones we play with our friends.

February's game is Go.

No, we're not talking about the ancient Chinese game involving little black and white counters. We're talking about Go, the 60's board game that takes you around the world on the hunt for souvenirs. While this is part of our charity shop collection, it is also one of the few that we went hunting for rather than stumbling upon. Joe's mum played this game as a child and Joe has fond memories of playing it too.

The premise is fairly simple - travel from city to city to collect a fixed number of souvenirs and then race to be the first back to London. As with every game there are the spaces everybody wants to land on (Thomas Cook - tickets and bureau de change under one roof), and those everyone avoids (Customs!). Some precise dice rolling is needed to get you from country to country while avoiding the hazards that might befall every traveler. It is a rare game where a freak storm does not whip an unwary passenger from their route and park them in an obscure part of the board - that's all part of the fun (though mighty frustrating if you were almost back to London and suddenly you find yourself in the Falkland Isles!).

One of the joys of the game are the details, and none more so that the range of currencies you need to use to buy your tickets and souvenirs. From Deutchmarks in Germany to Yen in Japan all with different exchange rates, its worth picking yourself a good banker for this one! Fortunately a handy chart is provided to make things easier.

I'd say this is one of the favourites on our shelf. Even the most cunning of players can be derailed by an unlucky dice throw and that makes it a good game for all the family.

Catch up with previous Life's a Game posts here.

Read More

Life's a Game: 1. Shave a Sheep

One aspect of our life that, up till now, we've not mentioned on this blog is a love of board games. In particular we enjoy hunting down older games from charity shops. While this has a tendency to be hit and miss (we've certainly bought a couple of duds) it has also produced some gems which we'd like to share with you.

Therefore, in 2014, we're going to feature a board game of the month, working our way through the highlights of our collection. Some will be old, some new and some will not be ours but belong to friends.

January's game is Shave a Sheep.

This is the most recent acquisition in our charity shop collection and kept the family very amused over Christmas. It's a simple enough game: first you make yourself a sheep from the Lego provided. Then you roll a dice to try and collect wool for your sheep - but beware, if your sheep looks too good someone might try and swap their sheep for yours, or even set the wolf on you! Fortunately the wolf seems to eat wool not sheep, so all is redeemable.

The best bit of this game in our opinion is the Lego sheep. While you might start the game with a sheep that looks like the one on the box it seems impossible to keep it that way. As other players take their turns you often find yourself fiddling with your little sheep; first you make it longer, then maybe shorter, perhaps switch the eyes and the nose, start checking the box for spare parts... a yellow eye? Thank you very much.

Read More