Number 10

So just like last year I’m giving you my top ten holiday gift ideas in time for Black Friday (which I refuse to participate in after one particularly scarring experience some years ago lol).

Keep checking back every few days to follow along in the countdown.

Some of the items from last year remain on my best gifts to get/receive list, but there are some newbies too! One of those newly discovered items are the beautiful globe marbles featured above that I purchased from Amazon.

As many of you know I’m an avid traveler.  I’m also an Aggravation player. Aggravation is a game that I remember learning from my ex-husband’s family several years ago, but my mom had an old board from her dad so apparently I wasn’t the first in the family to play 🙂

The game is sort of like Sorry with the aim of being the first to get all your marbles to their ‘home base’. You need to roll a 1 or a 6 on the die to ‘bring a man out’ and you can shorten your journey home by taking the middle. You can also get stuck there for quite awhile! You can’t leap frog your own or other players’ marbles. That is pretty much the gist of it. It’s simplicity makes it a great family game. Just the other night my ten year old daughter Olivia, the new beau, and I played under the stars.

That being said, I KNOW adults can also have fun playing this sans kids! When I was married, my ex and I would go to our bestie’s house, bring a space heater into the garage, and with our wine, beer, and smokes ready we’d trash talk one another till 2 or 3 in the morning. It was usually girls vs. boys and we kept score on the back of the board. I still smile when I think of our victory song Gina! Of all things, it was Ariel’s ‘ahh ahhhh ahhh’ song…bahaha

We’d buy in at a $1 per person per game and we kept an ongoing kitty to accompany our running scoreboard. Once the pot was at $100 or so the four of us would use it to go out to dinner.

So if you know someone who loves to travel and who also plays any games that involve marbles this might just be the perfect gift (they aren’t quite as beautiful as in the pic and a bit smaller than I was expecting, but I also suck at reading measurements. In any case, they still add a touch of loveliness to the board and are a great reminder of all the magical places I’ve been – the majority of them with that bestie actually).

If you want to know more about the game or the marbles – just ask!
Or better yet, come play!
But only if you can take lots of jawing and aren’t a sore loser.
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