Earth Hour on Saturday night crept up on us once again this year.

With minutes to go until 8.30pm, we were doing the usual scramble for tea candles, matches and lighters.

Why are there always only two matches left in the handy, bulk box of 90 safety matches?

Redheads are rarer than hen's teeth in our home.

Earth Hour started in Sydney during 2007.

Since then, it has become a global movement for change.

More than 180 countries and territories join Earth Hour every year to switch off their electric lights for one hour between 8.30pm and 9.30pm.

We ate Green Zebra lemon tart by candlelight with hastily-whipped vanilla cream to kick off the hour-long hiatus. (Electricity use must spike every year at precisely 8.25pm ahead of the looming Earth Hour lock-down!)

Plenty will call it a token gesture, but there's a lot to like about a one-hour, technology time-out on a Saturday night.

Our girls had two friends staying over with us for the night.

All of them were quick to help dot enough candles around the house and get on board for a, well, board game.

Surprisingly, they chose Monopoly because there are no accountants or property developers among us.

"You sure you don't want Boggle? Scrabble? Pictionary?" I suggest.

They headed for the biggest candle-lit bedroom with the New Zealand version of Monopoly.

"Last chance for Boggle," I say, knowing they will never finish a game of Monopoly in an hour.

Halfway through Earth Hour, I checked progress on the Monopoly match under the guise of needing help to find the torch on my iPhone. (Actually, I really did need help to find the torch on my iPhone. Tweens instinctively understand Apple!)

I noticed there were two hotels on the Monopoly board and my eight-year-old looked like she's blown her budget. Somehow, she's played this strategy before and it's worked out in her favour.

I took my torch and made a beeline for the bathroom.

With Earth Hour done and dusted, I suggested the girls put on a movie, even if they finished it in the morning.

But their Monopoly game had just got interesting and they preferred to see it through until the end.

My eight-year-old's money had burnt a hole in her pocket but she had put up four hotels across the North and South islands.

Within half an hour, she had sent the other three broke as she charged rent in all the right places.

When she finally surfaced from the bedroom, she said: "You won't believe it?"

"What?" I said, giving her the chance to reveal the result.

She said: "We actually finished a game of Monopoly!"

With the days getting shorter and Daylight Saving due to end this weekend, board game season is officially open.

On Sunday night, our girls pulled out the much-less complicated board game, Beat The Parents.

It's still not a spelling or word game but trivia trumps dealing in property for me any day.

Also I was completely thrilled with my youngest's answer to the kids' question: What does www stand for in an internet address?

"Wagga-Wagga-Wagga!" she suggested, hopefully.

"You're wrong," I said, "But you can advance two spaces because you really made me laugh!"

My eldest thought I shouldn't be able to make up rules on the run until I reminded her that she was on the same team as her sister.

Now my youngest knows that www stands for world wide web and I learnt that the Statue of Liberty is on Ellis Island.

But with shorter days on the way, there's really nothing to lose from lighting some candles and pulling out a board game.