Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Count Down To Christmas Without Spending Money!

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I wanted to share a fun way we are counting down to Christmas without spending money this year. It’s also giving us some great family fun time too!

Every year I buy new games for Christmas. But this year? I’m not letting myself. Why? Because we have SO MANY GAMES. And many of them we’ve hardly had a chance to play.

So this year? I’m determined that we’ll spend some extra fun time playing games and reading books in the evenings leading to Christmas.

Count Down To Christmas Without Spending Money!

One day when all of the little kids were at school or napping, I dug out a pile of our favorite games, plus some that our elementary-age kids haven’t played before. I grabbed some of our Christmas books too. I wrapped them all and piled them on top of the mantle.

I ended up with 16 packages total, so beginning December 9, we’ll begin taking turns unwrapping one package each evening. We’ll get all ready for bed, then play a game together before our family singing and prayer time.

My hope is that this will become a new family tradition – and not just at Christmastime! During the long winter nights, I’m hoping we get into a habit of pulling out games to play together or books to read together.

Hopefully, I’ve picked out games that our younger kids can play and our older kids will still enjoy! Our game-gift pile includes:

  1. Spot It!
  2. Memory
  3. Uno Attack
  4. Connect Four
  5. Blink
  6. Headbandz
  7. Yahtzee
  8. Farkle
  9. Pass the Pigs
  10. Huskerdu
  11. Racko
  12. Pictionary
  13. Plus several Christmas books from the library!

Need more great family game ideas?

Find a huge list here. 

What about books?

If you don’t have many Christmas books, and you don’t want to spend the money to buy some, head to the library. They are free, you can wrap and enjoy them, then take them back to the library by their due date!

More Count Down to Christmas Ideas

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Family Game Night: Favorite Games!

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I love sharing our favorite games!

It’s much trickier now to find time to play games as a family – mostly because we have a lot of little ones who like to put game pieces into their mouths. But whenever we can, we like to pull out a game to play with our 6 and 7-year-olds. And once all six little ones are put down for the night, we can get out some of the more detailed games for the grown-ups!

In case you’re looking at games to enjoy during the holidays with your family, we wanted to share these lists again. We’ve added new ones too!

Favorite Games List

Family Games Little Ones Enjoy

  • Hoot Owl Hoot (my favorite to play with the kids!)
  • Pop the Pig
  • Spot It!
  • Candyland
  • Memory
  • Hungry Hippos
  • Trouble
  • Don’t Break the Ice
  • HiHo Cherry-O
  • Uno Attack
  • Farkle
  • Pass the Pigs
  • Huskerdu (great for younger kids – still fun for adults)

Family Games for Bigger Kids and Adults

  • 5-Second Rule
  • Connect Four
  • The Game of Things (Great fun for a group!)
  • Rummikub
  • Settlers of Catan (With extentions, which you’ll need if you have more than 4 players.)
  • Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights (This is an expansion of Settlers of Catan. This is our favorite add-on to regular Setters.)
  • Seafarers of Catan (Also an expansion of Settlers.)
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Carcossonne
  • Bohnanza (This one is unique. Great for older kids and adults. We love this one!)
  • Life
  • Risk
  • Manhattan
  • Guestures
  • Taboo
  • Blink (A great stocking stuffer!)
  • Headbandz
  • Acquire
  • Sequence
  • Clue
  • Apples to Apple Junior (This is probably our favorite group game. We don’t recommend the regular version of this game because the cards are less familiar to the kids.)
  • Scattergories
  • Pictionary
  • Cranium
  • Boggle (This game totally counts as school work, but no one knows they’re learning.)
  • Monopoly
  • Sorry
  • Quelf (I’ve actually decided that I very much dislike this one. The kids like it though.)
  • Racko
  • Balderdash
  • Yahtzee
  • Mastermind
  • Skipbo (We’ve played hours of this game through the years!)
  • Wits and Wagers
  • Anomia (One of my new favorites!)
  • Pandemic
  • Castle Panic
  • Mars Attack
  • Codenames
  • Tsuro
  • Avalon

Your turn to weigh in! What are your favorite family games?

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Help! We need a new game for Christmas!

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

This post is becoming somewhat of a Christmas tradition here. Each year I tell you how much we love games, I tell you about the games we already have, and I ask for your ideas for new games to get our family for Christmas. After all, we are a gaming family. Surely we can’t survive Christmas without a new one under the tree, right?

What Are Your Favorite Family Games

Here are the games we already have and love:

  • 5-Second Rule
  • Spot It!
  • The Game of Things
  • Rummikub
  • Settlers of Catan (With extentions, which you’ll need if you have more than 4 players.)
  • Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights (This is an expansion of Settlers of Catan. This is our favorite add on to regular Setters.)
  • Seafarers of Catan (Also an expansion of Settlers.)
  • The Castles of Burgandy
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Carcossonne
  • Bohnanza (This one is unique. Great for older kids and adults. We love this one!)
  • Life
  • Risk
  • Manhattan
  • Guestures
  • Taboo
  • Blink (Malachi and I play this quick card game a lot while the older brothers are at basketball practice.)
  • Headbandz
  • Acquire
  • Sequence
  • Clue
  • Apples to Apple Junior (This is probably our favorite group game. We don’t recommend the regular version of this game because the cards are less familiar to the kids.)
  • Scattergories
  • Pictionary
  • Cranium
  • Boggle (This game totally counts as school work, but no one knows they’re learning.)
  • Monopoly
  • Sorry
  • Quelf (I’ve actually decided that I very much dislike this one. The kids like it though.)
  • Racko
  • Balderdash
  • Yahtzee
  • Farkle
  • Pass the Pigs
  • Huskerdu (great for younger kids – still fun for adults)
  • Mastermind
  • Skipbo

Those links are my affiliate links.

So with these facts in mind:

  • We usually have 5 or more playing at the same time.
  • Sometimes we like games we can pull out and play for just 20 minutes or so once we finally get together in the evening before bed.
  • Often we have company and like to play big group games

What games would you recommend for our family this year? What do you have and like?

Thanks for making this so much fun every year!

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Gratituesday: Early Christmas and the Need for Ear Plugs

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gratituesday[2]

Our travel plans this holiday season brought on the need for our family to celebrate Christmas a few days early. I think once you see what our big gift was for this year, you’ll understand why transporting gifts on the road was not a good option…

drum set

You remember how I shared that three of our boys are taking music lessons this year – one piano, one guitar, and one drums. A drum set (which we got for a fantastic deal online) was the perfect gift for our “band of boys.” Out came the guitar, synthesizer, and microphone to join the drums – and it’s been one very loud jam session ever since.

This has been incredibly fun to experience. It has also been incredibly…loud. We expected nothing less, but WOW. Today’s project has been to clean out and rearrange our upstairs “game room” so that we can transfer all instruments far away from mom’s office. :)

We’ve had some great down time and oodles of fun with our new instrument and board games. Now, we’re working to get ready for a huge road trip. Praise God for all the fun and family time that Christmas brings!

What are you thankful for this Gratituesday? Leave a comment to share!

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