Get Your Game On Thursday

For Christmas last year I got a Disney Pictopia board game and I was very excited to play. I love Trivia and I love Disney so this was perfect. 

The game is great for family play. My husband, my seven year old son, and I all played together. There were questions spanning from older classics to newer animations, as well as a few about Walt Disney World theme parks. I personally have never been to a theme park, so those questions were harder for me! My husband kicked my butt with those ones. 

The questions are on the back of the card and another player has to read them to you. The front of the card where you can see has four pictures, some area easy to see and some are zoomed in on facial features or silhouettes of characters. The questions on the back are related to the pictures and you might have to collaborate with other players on answers or you may have to answer on your own. 

There is a board and you want to get to the end of the board by making bets on whether or not you think you will get the answer right. If you think by looking at the pictures you are likely to get it right, you will bet a higher number and then move further on the board. If you don't think you will get it right you bet a lower number. You can't bet the same number twice until all other betting chips have been played already. 

There is also an app you can download on your smart device that has even more questions to use in the game - however after a certain amount of times using it, the app will prompt you to pay for more questions. 

The game moves pretty fast and is a lot of fun. I am excited to play again with a larger group. 

Current Video Game Obsession

I have been pretty obsessed with Animal Crossing New Leaf for the 3DS since I purchased it in May last year. I play almost every day while dinner is cooking. If you don't know what this game is about and you are in to real-time life simulation games, I suggest you look it up! 

Anyone can play this game - my son understood what to do at age 4 with my DS version.  You earn currency by working around town and you purchase items and expand your house and earn all sorts of goodies. You cannot technically "win" in this game, but I am still determined to somehow collect all the items and badges and fish and bugs and paintings and on and on so that I can say I won. :P 

Tuesday Tunes

It's Tuesday and that means it is time for another Tuesday Tunes. And even though I'm terribly excited about Tuesday Tunes, I'm more excited for Friday. Why? Do you have to ask? Because it is Friday! Also, Friday happens to be my last name now that I married one. No, seriously. So here is a playlist about Fridays and my excitement about that amazing day of the week. Also, one of these songs happened to be the song we walked out to at the wedding. 

I just love cover songs. With the accessibility of YouTube, it is so easy to find great ones from people who play well and clearly love music. Here is one from James Dalby - Sweet Dreams he has a ton on his channel, but this one was stuck in my head all day today. 

Read More Friday - January

It is 2017 and one of my goals this year was to read more. I read a good amount last year but fell out of it the second half of the year because I was studying so much for tests for work and I became distracted with other things. I joined Good Reads and set myself up with a reachable goal. I made a big spreadsheet with a giant To Be Read list (TBR) and I am excited to get a good portion of those books read. Right now the list is over 420 books that I want to read over the next few years. Crazy, right? The list is sure to grow but I'm not discouraged. I just like having the list so when it comes time to buy the next book I have plenty of options. 

I have already read 3 of the books on the list so I'm pretty pleased with the good start I'm getting in January. 

The first book I read was The Grift of the Magi by Ally Carter. This book is a part of the Heist Society series. 

I got into Ally Carter's Gallagher Girl series because Gallagher is my maiden name and the book called to me when I was at the store one day. That series was about teenage spies and I thought it was a fun and easy to read series. I love the Heist Society series, and The Grift of the Magi is a short story or Novella to go along with it. The series is about teenage thieves and the many plans they come up with to do what they think needs to be done. It is enjoyable and this book was just a fun addition. It doesn't really move the overall series along and I'm not sure if Carter plans on making more but I enjoyed it. 

Next I read The Siren from Kiera Cass. This book is not part of a series. The title says it all - it is about sirens. 

I started liking Kiera Cass when I read The Selection series. I wanted to read this book because I liked her style. It is much different and I did enjoy it, although I thought some things were a bit bizarre - especially the way it ended - sweet yet odd. Not much else to say about that book! I read it pretty quickly. 

Then I moved on to another Ally Carter book, All Fall Down, the first book of the Embassy Row series. 

The book was super cheap on B&N for Nook so I scooped it up to give this series a try. For me, it wasn't as good as her other two series that I love so much (Gallagher Girls and The Heist Society), but I didn't mind it and I'll probably read the rest of the series because I usually need closure with every series I begin! 

The next book I began was called Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake. I have never read any books by Blake before but GoodReads suggested I try this and then I saw it very cheap on B&N so I thought, why not? 

For me, this one was hard to get through. There were some parts that went easily but some of it was either too randomly dark and gory for the sake of being dark or gory - to me, anyway. I don't tend to love those sorts of things and I'm sure there are plenty that do that might like it. The world that was created was hard to understand at first because I couldn't relate at all and it wasn't spelled out or explained right away. You had to figure it out as it went along. Still, I didn't hate it.

Next Up...

I downloaded a few books that were free or cheap on my Nook and so my next book will be A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston. I have a few tests to study for between now and March so I'm not sure how much leisurely reading I will get done but my fingers are crossed! 

Tuesday Tunes

I am a little obsessed with themed mixes right now. I've made a Road Trip one and Halloween one and I listened to various nonstop Christmas mixes last month. To start the year off right I made a January Winter Playlist. I'm excited to listen to it on the way to work when it starts snowing around here. Some of the songs you hear a lot during the holidays but really are winter songs.  

 I have been a big fan of Walk Off the Earth for a while. Santa got me tickets to the show in Philly in March. I went a couple of years ago and had a chance to be on stage thanks to my hubby. It rocked. My favorite cover at the moment is their cover of Closer. 

Thanks to them, my son asked for kazoos this Christmas along with some other fun musical instruments. Can't wait to record him using them! 

Google Play Station

 My current favorite is the '90's Pop Punk station. It has artists like Blink 182, Green Day, The Offspring, Rancid, Bad Religion, NoFX, Pennywise, and Lagwagon. 

That's all for today's Tuesday Tunes. Check back for more random things!