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I have been playing games like crazy. It’s, like, an every day thing around here right now and I’ve gotta tell you… I couldn’t be happier. I LOVE PLAYING GAMES. It’s gotten to be so frequent that I just purchased a notebook just for game scores, to immortalize them for all eternity. And after I’m winning like 8 games IN A ROW we finally get around to using our book and guess who wins. Not me? The streak has been broken and it is documented on the VERY FIRST PAGE of my notebook. Crud. :)
At any rate I’ll set aside being a poor sport for a little while and show you how we made our latest outdoor game. Now, to be fair, it’s been hot and dead in our backyard. The grass is yellow and it’s actually kind of sharp from where it last was mowed. Isn’t that kind of nuts? One wrong step off your flip flop and you might find yourself in a bit of pain.
So we decided to toss these suckers in the car, for the second time, to hopefully actually play with the set at my parent’s house where the grass is green and lovely. As it turns out, our giant lawn dice game is totally fun and a bit of a workout, too! :)
For this project you will need:
- Untreated 4×4 lumber
- Saw
- Wood stain
- Paint
- Paint spouncer
Now a 4×4 board is 4 inches by 4 inches before it is finished into a smooth edged piece of lumber. When finished it is typically 3.75 inches by 3.75 inches. Since we want square cubes we’re going to cut 5 pieces that are 3.75 inches long. This will give us symmetrical shapes.
Once cut sand any rough edges if necessary. The last thing game night needs is a splinter or two!
Stain the wood your choice of color. My choice is currently special walnut by Minwax for EVERYTHING.
Once stained allow to dry. I let mine be overnight.
To finish use the spouncer and your choice of paint (this is white chalk paint) to turn them into dice. Yay!
To keep from getting confused I painted all of one number at a time leaving the bottom, last number to be finished up a few hours later. I also took a dice from our actual Yahtzee game to make sure that I had them in the same order. After inadvertently placing colors in the wrong place on a Rubik’s Cube I got a few emails and instant messages about how badly I messed that one up. We can’t be having that mess, again :)
Now I had a chalkboard that had no other use in my stash so I decided to make a scorecard out of it with an oil paint marker.
It’s cute and all, but in the end I didn’t want to mess with it so I grabbed some Yahtzee score cards and with a clipboard that would be a super easy way to keep score.
The initial idea was to toss these suckers around in a 5 gallon bucket from the hardware store to simulate the whole cup thing from Yahtzee.
In the end I borrowed my mom’s galvanized tote/bucket type of a thing and guess what? It’s freaking insanely loud! It looks good in pics and all but I do NOT recommend it unless you’re keen on headaches :) But a plastic bucket? I still think that’s the way to go!
With summer winding down it’s the perfeect time for a few outdoor lawn games. Rob and I have been making up a mess of them but time is getting away from us. Perhaps we’ll get our third one finished up so you can play it this fall or perhaps it will have to wait until 2017. Either way, I hope you’ll chunk up that 4×4 and play a fun lawn dice game with your family before Autumn truly sets in!
