Imitate Saint Nick

The countdown task today is to do something that inspires a Saint Nick-type good ol’ belly laugh to remind us of the joy of the season. Better Homes and Gardens suggests the following movies:

• A Christmas Story


• Olive, the Other Reindeer


• The Santa Clause


• Home Alone

While these would work, we’re opting for playing a board game tonight that I made some time back called Widdershins, a Celtic-style backgammon game.

This was posted on my Flickr account before my blogging days. I made the game board by transferring the pattern to a piece of wood and then used a wood-burning tool to make the design.



The game pieces are flat little glass stones and the dice came from a game store. A leather drawstring pouch holds the pieces and I created the instruction booklet on my computer.

Here’s the source link.

My family is big on board games. To go with today’s theme, I’ll share a very special Christmas gift for one of my children. Truly, no one in my family reads my blog so I can post anything I want without worry.



This is a full-sized cross-stitched Monopoly game that I started and my mother finished before she died. I had it professionally framed so you can easily play on it but hang it on the wall as art when not in use.



I bought the project leaflet in 1984 and started the project that same year but life intervened so Mom took over the rest of the project, doing 98 percent of it.

My siblings and I carefully collected together all of Dad and Mom’s wonderful handcrafted projects when they died. We are slowly gaining the emotional strength to do something with them. The Monopoly project is one of those.



An Internet search yielded the official history and rules which I printed and bound on my spiral-binding machine. I found Monopoly-themed fabric on eBay and made a simple drawstring bag.

The Monopoly cookie tin is another eBay find and holds everything except the board itself. On the back of the frame, I’ve attached the story of this gift’s creation.

My mom would love this!