{340} cards

this was a no-brainer and i'm surprised i'd never done this one either! the "a" for the ace was helpful. i just wish my name had a "j", "k" or "q" in it too. :)

{338} uno!

i didn't even know that i had uno until i hauled out trivial pursuit the other day! score! i love uno.

{336} trivial pursuit

welcome to 2013! that means i only have one month of this project left!

{333} monopoly deed

my favourite board game ever: monopoly. i had to use my name somehow! i wish now that i'd edited the whole card to read differently. oh, well. next time. ;)

{331} kakuro

totally obsessed with kakuros of late. i find myself waking up at 4:30 a.m. and hauling another one out and an hour later i'm wide awake but know that i need to go back to sleep. it's ridiculous. i always get into these bizarre crazes.

{260} hangman

such a simple idea!

i wish i'd thought of this one a long time ago. what's interesting about this project is that 240 days ago i don't think i really thought i'd ever be able to create 365 names. and now here i am with only 105 days to go and i think i have TOO many ideas left. but, i am confident that it will end on january 31, 2013. and i can't wait to begin my next 365-project! i've got the perfect idea and i'm excited about it already. that one will begin on january 1, 2013 so i'll have one month of overlap.

{203} sudoku

i love playing sudoku. before getting my iPhone, i'd cut it out of the free press each day and complete it. who knew numbers could be so fun?! this coming from the girl who HATES math and failed her grade 12 math course. shhh, don't tell my parents.

{193} dominoed

so, i already had a post not too long ago called "dominos" (#149) but that was different! i used the dominos to create the shape of my name. this time i changed the dots on the dominos to read "lauren". boy, nearing 200 names and i am getting more and more stumped every day! what an awesomingly challenging project!

{149} dominos

i was at the local thrift store today to look for pyrex. but i also wanted to check out their games section for the off-chance that i could find an old lite-brite there. no luck. so, then i like to look through all the games and see what kind of names i could make out of some of them. then i spotted a bag of dominos and i thought that'd be a great idea! except, even better, i found a tin of Cars dominos. this was perfect because karen's nephew is hugely into Cars and i knew i could re-gift the dominos as soon as i'd used them. sold!

yes, i went through the painstaking process of actually making sure that i did not just simply lay out the dominos, but that i actually went through the effort of making sure they connected properly--as a domino should. success!

{89} crossword

i am addicted to crosswords. especially now that it's summer-ish weather outside. my favourite thing to do is take my big crossword book outside and just sit and do that for hours. much like i did yesterday! (and will again tomorrow) i also had a little other work to do with today's name...incorporating a message for a friend who is celebrating a birthday today. because i knew that would make it a little harder to do, i went with the crossword idea for today. i finally found a page with a puzzle that had the right types of spots to write my message and incorporate my name. i like this hidden message thing. i'll have to do it again. (side note: the word "ass" appears in my puzzle but that is not the secret message. the clue really did ask for a "cart puller"!)

{88} probe

does anyone else remember the popular 70s game "probe"? it was one of our family's favourites and i guess it still is! every once in awhile my mom and i haul out the game and play a few rounds. she kicks my ass each and every time. she always somehow wins with simple words like "cupboard" or "fridge" or "cabinet" whereas i'm playing difficult words like "pneumonic" or "psychiatry" or "unfortunate". ugh. but, we always have a great time no matter what!

{87} rook

yikes. almost every night this week i have found myself at my parents' house playing rook! lol we're just slightly addicted. or maybe it's because i haven't won a game since AUGUST! that's 27 games without a single win for moi!

we love to play rook. see, my dad was a major competitive rook player back in the 60s and before he and my mom were a couple, they even played games together then. but, my dad was a different person. he was so competitive that he couldn't handle losing or he couldn't handle it if his partner didn't play their cards correctly. he's such a different person now. he's so mellow about it. i mean, does he want to win? of course! but, it's NEVER a big deal if he doesn't.

i ended up taking the kitty with this hand and winning a round! yay!

george had so much fun playing outside in the nice fresh air that he totally zonked out. my parents always have this chair in their eating area just for george. that way he feels like he is part of the game too and he is always within stroking distance. :)

my mom helped me lay out the cards to spell my name.

i am always the dealer. fastest dealer in town! my parents always joke that i should work in vegas. :)

{51} the peg game

when our family went to florida three years ago, we went to "cracker barrel" twice. on each of the tables in the restaurant were these peg games. our family enjoyed playing them so much that my mom bought one and brought it home with her! she has completely mastered the game and can finish it in the blink of an eye and end up with just a single peg in the middle. since i was at her house again today, i decided this would be a great platform to make my name.


WRONG! after the "l" and the "a", i realized that this wasn't such a great idea. even my mom declared this name to be a #fail! lol oh, well. it had to count because i needed a post for today!

{39} rummikub

another game, another day! rummikub is the game that i would always play with my grandmother when i'd go to her house. she was very competitive and would ALWAYS win at this game. i would barely have played out my first hand and she'd already have won! i have such fond memories of those times with her--playing rummikub and scrabble!

now it's a game that my mom and i also play. it all comes down to who gets those happy faces because that almost always determines the winner. right now, i am on a three-game winning streak!

{37} upwords

i come from a "games" family. we love to play games. my mom and i favour the word-type games like scrabble, proble and upwords. when we have a free evening together, i love to go to her house and just play games with her! upwords is always challenging for many reasons. one, it makes you really think about how to maximize points plus it is challenging on my patience! :) i hate any words that are more than 4 letters long because it's harder to build on top of them so i find myself getting frustrated when a 5-letter, or heaven forbid, a 6-letter word is played!

in the end, it's all fun. it comes down to the letters that you pick up and if there is a place you can actually use them.

{12} wordsearch

you know i have this list of 70 ideas i made myself, plus i have my book to spurn creativity and yet i sat for the longest time this morning frustrated because i couldn't come up with any ideas i was totally passionate about. so, i was quite relieved when i thought of the wordsearch idea and decided to go for it. i just made it using an online wordsearch creator. at first it didn't like that all the words were the same (ie. "lauren") so then i started calling each word something different (e.g. laurena, laurenb, laurenc) and then the creator liked that better.