Family Game Archives - Jodie Berndt

Top Ten Favorite Things + a Black Friday GIVEAWAY

11.29.2024

We all have our favorite things, and I imagine your inbox is chock full of ideas on Black Friday. I’m all for sharing gift ideas that we love—and you’ll find my Top Ten in this post—but first…

Let’s do a Black Friday Book Giveaway!

These three lovelies released this year, and they’ve quickly become some of my go-to favorites from the bookshelf:

Sara Hagerty’s The Gift of Limitations is for anyone who’s feeling defeated or weary (or who just has too much laundry, too many bills, and too many open tabs on her browser). With the wisdom and empathy of a trusted friend, Sara takes us by the hand and shows us how to exchange our thoughts for God’s so that, instead of being a burden, our weaknesses can become a wonder-full part of our stories. (As a 62-year-old grandma, I devoured this book; my 30-year-old daughter is loving it too!)

Jeannie Cunnion’s Closer to God is a beautifully designed devotional that’s perfect for anyone who wants to experience God’s soul-refreshing, tangible presence in everyday life—but isn’t sure how that happens, exactly. With 40 different (short) readings and prompts to spur reflection and prayer, this is a bedside table book you can return to again and again. And psst…this one makes a great hostess gift or stocking stuffer; Jeannie writes about deep stuff in a shallow-ish way (which I mean as high compliment).

And finally, Alyssa Bethke’s When Doing it All is Undoing You is one of those books where you read the title and, next thing you know, you’ve hit “add to cart.” This one’s for the gal who loves to control circumstances, manage outcomes, and hold everything together—and then wrestles with a sense of disillusionment when life doesn’t look like like she thought it would. Is there a better way? Yes, indeed!

Again, all three of these beauties are in the book bundle. We’re hosting the giveaway on my Instagram page and I’ll announce the winner on Sunday. But…there’s a catch: You can’t KEEP them all if you win. ‘Tis the season for sharing our favorite things, and in order to enter the giveaway, you have to tag TWO FRIENDS with whom you will share the books. Two for your friends; one for you. (Which is, I know, how a lot of us shop.) 😉

Speaking of friends…

These are a few of my favorite things

I found myself at an early Christmas party this year, one where everyone was asked to bring one of their “favorite things” for a gift swap. We didn’t steal from one another; instead, the hostess read a poem that came with instructions like, “Santa comes when the kids are in bed; pass your gift to someone wearing red.” It was all very civilized and nobody got hurt.

And people’s gift ideas were super creative! Folks showed up with everything from a pair of gold earrings and some must-have moisturizer to a basket stuffed with all the fixings for espresso martinis.

Me? Well, I took the invitation quite literally and brought my actual new favorite thing. It’s this walking vest, and (like almost everything else in this Top Ten list) it’s something I use pretty much every day.

Truth be told, the walking vest was NOT the most popular gift at the party. In fact, I’m pretty sure people thought I was joking. But then the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about the bone-density benefits of sporting such a stylish apparatus, and my phone started blowing up with people wanting the link, and to know how heavy a vest they should order. (The answer, experts say, is 5-10% of your body weight).

Gift idea #2 is just as valuable (at least for those of us who take coffee seriously). I’m a latte girl on a home-coffee budget, and this milk frother makes even the most ho-hum coffee taste like it came from a legit barista:

3. My friend Emilie recommended these little candles. They burn for twenty minutes (think Swiss watch in wax form), and they’ve helped keep me focused when I want to pray, read my Bible, or just sit in solitude for a bit as I lean into God.

4. You may remember me writing—and raving—about my three-year-plan to read the whole Bible. I’m on the home stretch now, and Search the Scriptures has been the best traveling companion a reader could want. The book comes with do-able reading portions, plus introductions to each section and daily questions add to your understanding. (Pro-tip: I took the book to FedEx and had them chop it into three different volumes and spiral-bind each. Makes it easier to tuck into a purse or suitcase!)

5. Okay so, Jesus didn’t journal (that we know of), so if you are not a journal-person, don’t let anybody guilt you about that. But if you ARE a journal lover (or if you think you might be), the Growth Book is, hands-down, the best spiritual resource I have ever used. Visit the Growth Roots Co. website to discover all the features tucked into this gem (and check out the new colors while you are there!).

6. Pens. Can pens be a love language? I think they might be. My current obsession are these black-ink “jotter pens” from Emily Lex; they write so smooooooth and feature different words like delight, celebrate, and (my favorite) abide…

…and if you’re a gal who likes to color-code notes or draw in your journal, this fun pack from LePen pairs perfectly with the Growth Book—no ink bleeding through or smearing on the page!

7. This tomato knife. My shopping-genius friend Michelle gifted this knife to me; if you like your tomatoes sliced straight and thin, you’ll want one too! (And psst – they come in a six-pack if you want to gift one to all of your Proverbs 27:17 friends!)

8. Our family is not a “game” family, but I want us to be—and Priorities was a definite crowd pleaser this year. The object is to guess how someone will “prioritize” five different cards and then spell P-R-I-O-R-I-T-I-E-S before “the house” does. Lot of laughs and (because you’re all on the same team) hardly any fighting.

9. And (almost) finally, in what might be the clearest sign yet that I’m moving up the rungs on Santa’s Nice List, I brought the weighted vest to the Favorite Things party (with a side of the 20-minute candles so that the gift would be good for body and soul) and, when all of the swapping and re-swapping was done, I somehow wound up with these:

These splurge-worthy hand towels from Weezie Towels have upgraded our Christmas game like no other decor. They are soft and useful and oh-so-pretty, and everyone who comes to my house this year is going to be more than a little impressed. (Thank you, Molly.)

And gift idea #10? Well…you all know I am not a great shopper, but I know a good deal when I see one. And when the publisher emailed to let me know that Praying the Scriptures for Your Children had been selected as an Amazon special on Black Friday Week, I knew I had to let you know.

Seriously. Never have I ever seen the book priced so low. Stock up on baby gifts, or grab a few copies and plan to pray for your kids with some friends in the new year (and you can use this free printable study guide on your own or in a larger group). But hop to it, cuz this price won’t last long!

Here’s hoping you enjoy at least one of my favorite things. Happy shopping—and don’t forget to tag two friends in the book bundle giveaway on my Instagram page.

(And for those of you who are like me and find yourself a little bit stressed out on Black Friday, can I just leave you with one of my favorite “Help me, God” prayers? This one’s from 2 Chronicles 20:12: We don’t know what to do, Lord, but our eyes are on you.)

Grateful for all of you!

❤️

Too Busy for Peace? You’ve Got Options

12.22.2017

Christmas is three days away.

Which, if you’re like me, means you are kinda busy. I’m wondering if the kids would mind if, instead of wrapping their gifts this year, I just shoved all the Amazon boxes into the family room and wished everyone a Merry Warehouse.

It could work.

First though, I have this blog to write. And you have this blog to read. And since we are all short on time (except maybe for my friend Sara Jane, who does things like fly fishing, and who knows how to quilt), I’ll give you some options.

If you want a post about finding peace in the midst of the mayhem, click here for an oldie (and say a little prayer for our family, as we mark our first Christmas without Khaki):
If the whole family is coming and you aren’t sure what you’ll do with everyone when the eggnog wears off, try the game we played on our family stay-cation. Put Grandma under the sheet for added fun:
If you don’t want a post but you’d still like some peace, try this: Swap worry for gratitude, tell God what you need, and think about stuff that’s actually worth thinking about. Here’s a free Christmas printable to help you remember these tips:

And finally, if you’ve been dying to know who won the book giveaway from launch week, I’ll tell you: Mary Martha (what a great name) in North Carolina, Alice in Virginia, and Crystal in Colorado. Thanks so much for your kind comments, Girls!

All right y’all. Let’s get to it. And, whether you plan to spend the weekend shopping and wrapping or fly fishing and quilting, may grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord! (2 Peter 1:2)

Merry Christmas! 🎄

Need a Good Laugh? Try this Game!

09.10.2015

There’s nothing like having a house full of recent college graduates to upgrade the family fun. They know all of the best games and – as promised – here’s a quick “how to” on one that we played during our Staycation last month. I imagine it’s known by many names, but we called the game “Salad Bowl.”

For starters, divide your group into two teams. Give everyone three slips of paper and have them write down one or two words on each. Almost any noun will do; our collection included patience (as in the virtue), Lawless (as in the movie), and Donald Trump (as in). Once everyone has written their words, fold em up and put them all in a – you guessed it – salad bowl.

(Note: When picking your words, it helps to be a little bit crafty or off-beat. I learned this lesson the hard way when I picked Sewanee. That’s where Robbie goes to school, and since he would be leaving the following week, I guess I was already missing him. It’s a good school, but a bad word choice, since Round One involves giving verbal clues so your team. All anyone had to say was, “Robbie’s college!” and they got it. Lame.)

So for Round One, everyone gets 30 seconds to pull words out of the bowl and try to explain them to their teammates, using any verbal clues you want. (Think “Catch Phrase,” without the beeping.) You go through all the words, alternating teams every 30 seconds, until all the words have been guessed.

Tally how many words each team got, record that score, and then put all the words back in the bowl.

Round two is a little trickier. You still alternate the guesses in 30-second intervals, getting as many words as you can in that time, but instead of giving long-winded clues or explanations about the word (“This is what happens when you have to wait for a really long time for something to happen…”) you pick just ONE WORD as a prompt. For instance, if you were trying to get your team to guess the word patience, you might simply say, “Virtue.”

(Since everyone is already somewhat familiar with the words, it’s not as random as it sounds.)

(Unless you are old like I am, in which case you don’t remember any of the words from Round One and you just sit there shouting out whatever occurs.)

Go through all of the words again, giving the one-word clues, until they’ve all been picked. Tally how many each team got, add that to the Round One score, and put the words back in the bowl.

Round Three is basically charades. You go through all the words again, with each player having 30 seconds to get his teammates to guess as many as they can. (Talented actors may want to tighten the interval to 20 seconds.) This is where the game can get interesting: Donald Trump was easy (the hair); patience less so. I stood there, doing nothing, expecting people to guess the word. I mean, they were waiting, right? Hello? Patience?

(Maybe I just had a bad team.)

Anyhow, you can end the game after Round Three, awarding the win to whichever team guessed the most words right after all three rounds. Or, you can move on to Round Four and add the sheet.

We recommend the sheet.

With the sheet in play, you put all of the words back into the bowl and pass it to a team member who is – you guessed it again – under a bed sheet. The person goes through as many words as possible, acting out the motions under the sheet. No words or encouraging noises allowed. No discouraging noises, either.

(My team got “patience” this time. Nothing like doing nothing to garner the “best actor” award, when you’re under a sheet. And I am pretty sure we won, by a margin of one.)

So…that’s Salad Bowl. It’s a game for all ages, as evidenced by the York family of Atlanta, Georgia. Special thanks to Kelly York for cluing us in to the world of possibilities that can open up in Round Four after her 82-year-old grandmother went under the sheet during their family vacay and pretended to be “Obama.”

Classic.

Would You Rather Play a Family Game?

11.18.2014

“I would rather suck an old man’s toes.”

That’s what one of our daughters said, a few years back, when we suggested she attend a Christian summer camp. We’d done the research (James Dobson and other family gurus pointed to the value of the Christian camp experience—a theory that was backed up by reality when we polled our friends’ older kids about what had mattered most in terms of strengthening their own faith), and we were planning to send her, whether she wanted to go or not.

Better parents might have been appalled by our gal’s somewhat, um, graphic response, but we couldn’t help ourselves. Robbie and I burst out laughing.

And “Would You Rather…” became an instant classic in our family.

If you’ve never played this game, the idea is to come up with two choices and have the other player (or players) choose which one they would “rather” do, have, or be. You can buy the official board game at Target, but we liked making up our own scenarios. And last year, I put some of our favorites on a few sheets of cardstock and cut them up to make game cards to give as Christmas gifts. (I also sewed little envelopes for them out of burlap, using old buttons and twine as closures, but I am a little Amish that way, and if you’d “rather” put your cards into a plain envelope or a little bag from someplace like Michael’s, that works.)

Your questions can be important, silly, or—if you have teenaged boys or a husband like mine—even a little gross. And if you’re looking for a way to inject a little “God” into your family fun, you can throw in a random Bible question or two: “Would you rather be David going up against Goliath or Daniel heading into the lions’ den?”

Need some ideas? Here are a few favorites from our list, just to get you started:

Would you rather be considered slightly annoying or generally dull?

Would you rather be caught lip-synching on The Voice or taking steroids in the Olympics?

Would you rather have peace or joy?

Would you rather always spit when you talk or always be spat upon when people talk to you?

(See what a deep and intellectual family we are?)

And of course, the classic: Would you rather suck an old mans toes or have an old man suck your toes?

If you’re looking for a way to spice up (if not elevate) the conversation around the dinner table this Thanksgiving, why not try this game?

And while you’re at it, consider putting a gift certificate for summer camp under the tree for your kids, even if you think they’d rather suck an old man’s toes. Our family loves Young Life, Kanakuk, J.H. Ranch, and Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Fatherhood (which I hope Robbie will guest blog about one day soon!).

(And just in case you are wondering, I think I would rather have an old man suck my toes. But I would feel badly about it.)

Tag: Family Game

Top Ten Favorite Things + a Black Friday GIVEAWAY

These are a few of my favorite things

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Too Busy for Peace? You’ve Got Options

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Need a Good Laugh? Try this Game!

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Would You Rather Play a Family Game?

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