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Could your regular “Girls’ Night Out” use a pick-me-up? The solution to a stale GNO routine may actually lie on the shelf in your family room. Games -- whether they’re of the board, card or video kind -- can turn a get-together into a juiced-up matchup of wits, creativity and physical skill. Add a batch of cocktails, a bowl of chips and some twists on the games themselves, and you’re in for an interesting, inexpensive “Girls Night In.” Just check out these real-life examples:

Giant Nertz Fest When Valann Budischak of Landenberg, Pa., and her relatives meet up for birthday and holiday celebrations, men and women eat together -- and then go their separate ways. The men head for a jigsaw puzzle in the next room and the adult women play Nertz, a fast-paced variation of solitaire that involves pairs of players, each pair with its own deck of cards. With Nertz, multiple hands are played at once as players build sequences of cards, similar to solitaire. Every card on the table is up for grabs. “We all enjoy a good laugh, and the bonus is, the game allows us to chat more intimately about the kids and grandkids than we can when the whole group is together,” says Budischak.

Wii, the Girls Where there’s a Wii, there’s a way to add a video gaming element to your ladies’ night. Mario Kart is the go-to game for Kathryn Mark of Madison, Wis., who invites girlfriends over to eat her home-baked Florentine dinners. The party gets really revved up when guests adjourn to the basement, grab remotes (or Wiimotes, if you speak the lingo) and start racing. “The whole Mario thing came about when my son showed my friend how to play, using the system he got for his birthday. It actually looked like fun. Who knew?” says Mark.

Take Two to Go Alison Tomchak carries a party in her purse everywhere she goes. A party game, at least. “I’m crazy for Scrabble but can’t exactly carry the box around with me. A girlfriend introduced me to Take Two (a variation on Scrabble, sans the board.) Once every week or two, I’ll run into a friend and persuade her to relax for a few minutes and play with me.” The games are almost always therapeutic. “We usually get to talking about whatever is on the front burner -- a problem with the kids or an issue at work,” says Tomchak.

Lose-the-rules Pictionary Stacey Gregory loves that her “girl group,” which has been together for more than 20 years, plays board games. But one of their favorites is a made-up game loosely based on Pictionary. The group breaks up into two teams, and each team has to guess a clue based on one drawing. Instead of paper and pencil, they use a white Erasor board. “We make up our own rules as we go along,” says Gregory, of Grandview, Mo. “For clues we use embarrassing moments we remember about each other. Almost every time a girl pulls out a clue, she's laughing so hard she has to compose herself before she can draw it.” The more creative you are, the more memorable your time will be.