Day Eighteen - Twenty: Various

A bit of a cop-out, but I've got behind with my blogs and want to catch up, so I'm grouping a few days together. The reason is that it was a certain person's birthday last week (me) and another certain person's birthday yesterday (Tom's) and it was those certain persons 30th birthdays, no less. And so we had a very busy weekend with lots of friends coming and going and staying and leaving, as well as a bit of a shindig on Saturday night with family and friends. Hence why I'm behind with the blog, and hence why I'm bunching together. Do forgive me.

Eighteen - The Newton Social Club
On Friday, the eighteenth day in our challenge, we chose to have people round and do some old-fashioned socialising (it certainly feels old-fashioned these days - it seems ages since we had a house full on a Friday evening playing games and drinking wine and having fun). We had a few people over to watch the Rugby, and fun was had by all. My dear friend Jamie, from the Isle of Man, also arrived for the weekend, so all in all a lovely evening. Note to self - socialise more.

Nineteen - P.A.R.T.Y
As I mentioned above (I hope you were concentrating), we threw a little party on Saturday night to celebrate our 30th birthdays. It was fun.

Twenty - Learn a new card game
Jamie taught me a really good new card game, which is ideal for two people. As I said in a previous post, we struggle to find games that are good for just the two of us, so this one was perfect. It was easy to learn - maybe that's just because Jamie's a good teacher and I'm a good learner - and got me gripped very quickly. I think it's called the Sunday Night Game (not sure why, but I can't tell you how happy I am that we were indeed playing it on a Sunday night), but I am told that it is a bit like rummy.

So there we go, that's the weekend caught up with. Back to normal blogs tomorrow!

Day Sixteen: My name's Danielle and I'm an Ingeniousaholic

Our challenge yesterday was actually, for us, a relapse. There's this amazing board game, called Ingenious, that my friend introduced to us back in February while we were on holiday together. As soon as we got home, we bought ourselves the game, and played it non-stop, two or three times a day, for probably about a month. We were evangelical about Ingenious, to which anyone who had the pleasure of spending any time with us during that month would bear witness. 

But it was, in all honesty, too much of a good thing. We were obsessed. So we had to break the cycle, which we managed to do (which is a relief because it wouldn't have been long before we were turning down invitations to social events in favour of playing Ingenious, or ignoring the cleaning that needed doing in favour of playing Ingenious, or not eating in favour of playing Ingenious....and where would that end up? Addiction is serious kids.) 

Hence why I said yesterday was a relapse. It was a wonderful, heady experience that made us remember the days gone by, and why we had fallen so hard for Ingenious. It's an.....ingenious game. Perfect for two players (which I find is quite a difficult attribute to come by in games), it also works well for up to four players. It's a sort of dominoes-cum-chequers hybrid whereby you link tiles of matching colours and accrue points based on how many matching colours you arrange in a single row. The ingenious bit is the scoring, though. You're trying to be the first to reach the end point, but also you don't want to be the player who's furthest behind. It's hard to explain on here but basically, it's great! Go and play it right now!