Tip Junkie

My favorite blog has gone dot com! She's having a huge birthday bash with tons of give aways. This is one spot I'm sure to visit every day. There's SO many great ideas and tons of fun links. I've learned so much and done so much from visiting this blog - oops, now website! www.tipjunkie.com

Summer Calendar

I'm sorry if this is hard to see. This is our summer calendar. I print a new one every two weeks, so today I'm creating one for the next two weeks. I type things on there that are scheduled already - like our summer movies on Mondays, and swimming lessons Tue-Wed-Thu. Then if there's doctor's appt or something else that we have to be at, I'll add that too.

The pictures are something we call "specials". We got the term from our Kindergartner. They are something different and fun each day. From cooking with mom, or arts and crafts, fieldtrips, or playing with friends. There's even a "free" day where we can choose what we want to do. They are all taped on so, they can be moved around or changed or taken off even. My kids are so excited for our "special" everyday and usually remind me what we are doing.

Today is field trip day. Last week we went to the Museum of Natural History, today we are going to the library (and then to get a treat, but don't tell them that!). We are bored with our books and I'm reading to them a lot right now, so we need some variety. They are actually excited about the library. And we'll probably find a few movies to rent too for boring afternoons.


This is for our free time when they are bored and don't know what to do. There's several choices on here, some involve me (like swimming and playing games) and some they can do on their own. They love popcorn and a movie or painting. Those are their top 2 choices.



We try to do chores in the morning so we have the rest of the day to play. And we are totally flexible, so if something doesn't fit that day or we want to be lazy, we just change our plans. But this is a great guide and gives the kids something to look forward to!

Chore Chart

Something I wanted to implement this summer is a chore chart. This is very simple and basic. My kids are 4 and 6, but it's time they start helping around the house. I gave them some daily chores: getting dressed, making their beds, doing the dishwasher (they take turns doing the top and bottom) and then helping with dinner. The pictures are the "big" chore of the day - laundry, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the playroom, cleaning the upstairs and dusting. We all do this together - working on the same room at a time, so I can teach and supervise and I'm finding that they like to help and work together.

Dinosaur Fossils

I found these kits at the Dollar Store - they are little fossil eggs and when you carve them out you find dinosaur bones. We did this after we went to the Museum of Natural History and saw lots of dinosaur bones and learned all about fossils.

It was very messy, and my kids got a little tired of looking for the last leg of their dinosaur, but this was a great activity. For a whole dollar? They LOVED it. We put the tiny dinosaurs together and they are sitting on my kitchen window sill. Worth every penny and then some!

Free Chocolate!

On Fridays, you can click here to register for a coupon for a free chocolate bar through Mars candy. We've already had 2 coupons sent to us in the mail. My kids are excited to redeem them!

Happy Donut Day!

National Doughnut Day, everyone! If you are lucky to live close to Krispy Kreme, go get a FREE donut today, Friday, June 5, with no purchase required! Sounds like a fun outing with my kids!

Cutting Back

So recently, my husband and I took at look at some of our finances to see what things we could cut out every month. Here are a few:

• Xbox on-line (not sure the right terminology here) for our 6 year old. Might go w/out saying, I know, that a 6 year doesn't need this. But we had it on there. It was $5.00 a month.
• On-line coupon service I was using. $15.00 a month. It's a great site, but I don't use it all the time, not even once a week. So I nixed it.
• Netflix. We were paying $8.99 a month and we never used it. We use Redbox more, and it's only $1.00 and we don't even rent 8 movies a month, so we said goodbye to Netflix.
• Online job database for my husband's field. You are going to die - we have been paying $29.99 a month for this for probably 2 years. He JUST got a new job (that we found on this site - it truly is the best site out there for his line of work) but since he's not looking for a job anymore, we are done with that!

So, just right there, we are saving almost $60.00 a month in cancelling things we weren't even using!

A few other things we analyzed/changed:

• Cell phone plans - make sure you have the right plan for the minutes/features you use.
• Cable plan - DVR, HD, Digital Cable - what does it all mean anyway? And all the extras add up, so make sure you are using your features, or just cancel them!
• Land line plans and long distance services
• Magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, any yearly subscription renewal.

I checked my credit card statement for anything that is billed to that on a regular basis, to make sure I wasn't paying for something I forgot about.

See what you can cancel/change/adjust and see how money you can save by doing that! It might surprise you. $60 x 12 months = $720.00 a year!

Dollar Store

Today we went to the Dollar Store to help stock up on activities for bored kids. The blue bucket is for our Tub o' Fun Summer bucket that I'm going to be putting together. I bought them each a new puzzle, aprons for doing messy crafts, and a dinosaur fossil kit where they dig up the bones and piece them together. Also a bead jewelry kit for my daughter. I found some cheap treats and a few other goodies and they got to pick out a toy of their choice while we were there. Who doesn't love the Dollar Store?

Balloon Bean Bags

I got this idea here - from Flipflops and Applesauce through another link from another blog. Anyway, we made these today! We followed the super simple instructions and my kids LOVED it. They even made one for the little brother since he wanted to be part of the action.


Our funnel was made of cardstock and we taped it together.



Here's two of our finished bean bags:

For my other Summer Fun ideas - click here!

Links

I have found some fun blogs with great ideas of things you can do with your kids this summer. I will for sure be using some of these ideas with my kiddos....

Make and Takes - I've been following this blog for a while. Yesterday they posted this idea on a Summer Tub o' Fun. We'll be doing this in the very near future!

Blissful Kids - they are part of Blissfully Domestic and have regular kid-friendly posts and ideas. Not all are "activities for kids" but there are some fun ones. Including this post called Make Balloon Beanbags.

Little Nummies - ADORABLE fun food ideas to do with kids.

Just For Fun - another blog with tons of ideas. Today's post is homemade Sidewalk Paint. Fun!!

Crafty Crow - they are following the alphabet with fun things to do that match the letter of the day. I haven't had time to look, but I have no doubt there are some great ideas in the archives here!

And don't forget to check for links on these sites. They've probably discovered other bloggers like themselves for their inspiration too. I get lost in links to links, etc. because there are so many great ideas out there!

For my other Summer Fun ideas - click here!

On the first day of summer....

Okay, I promise I won't count the days of summer with my post titles, but I will be sharing what we are doing to keep busy and save money this summer. I've got tons of fun ideas, found tons of cute blogs, made a super cute calendar, and am excited to have fun with my kids!

This was our first "Baking With Mom" day. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, since I hadn't gone grocery shopping for the week, but there was a recipe I wanted to try, so we made this recipe for Double Chocolate Banana Bread, except we made muffins.

I wrote out the recipe so my 6 year old could read it to us and my 4 year old helped me measure. They both stirred and help me scoop into muffin pans. We made mini and regular sized muffins.


Here's the final product. Yum! Everyone loved these. We'll freeze some for later and enjoy the rest over the next few days!

For my other Summer Fun ideas - click here!

Saving You Money at the Movies with Kids

Our local theater does a summer movies series for kids. For 12 weeks, you can go and watch a movie in the morning - they are usually movies that are already out in video, or close to it. The cost for the entire 12 weeks is $7 per person, 2 and up. Check around and see if any theaters or libraries, city recreation depts, etc. are doing this in your area.

Our theater sells a fun kids pack which includes an icee, popcorn, and a treat. This year, they increased the price to $4.50. Since I have 3 kids that like to eat during the movies (and we go with cousins, so they never sit together) this could cost $9-13.50 per week. That doesn't sound like a lot of money....but if you add it up over the summer, I would rather spend that money doing something else with my kids.

So this is what I did today. Mike & Ikes were on sale for $0.97 each today at the store. I got popcorn free with coupons. Walmart also sells an 8 pack of popcorn for $2.00. I divided up the Mike & Ikes in snack size bags and made up 13 bags, which will cover 6 movies (my youngest doesn't eat the candy). With the free popcorn, this will cost us $2.91 or $0.48 per movie! Even if I paid for the popcorn, it would still be less than $1 per movie. We will take drinks in water bottles (probably juice or a drink mix) and they will never know the difference!

Local Readers - Active Moms

My daughter picked this up yesterday at Chick-Fi-La. It's called Active Moms Events Calendar for June 2009. There are 900 fun things to do with your kids in June! Most things are free or cheap and it lists them by date. I went through it yesterday and highlighted the things that were near us and sounded like something my kids would enjoy. For example - a Puppet Show and a Magic Show at a local library, as well as hours and times of local splash parks, etc. They also have a website: http://www.activemoms.com/ and it looks like the same information might be available online, although I did not spend a lot of time on the website.

Just some more ideas for your summer activities. I had done some research online for story time at the libraries we live near, and found that they weren't doing it during the summer. However, there are other programs out there and this book found them for me! Yay!

Junk mail is not always junk....

We get this small magazine in the mail one every couple weeks. I have found some great deals by thumbing through this before throwing it away. Here's a few that I've used:

• Jiffy Lube coupons. I know, I would save money by changing our own oil, but my husband doesn't do that part of our car maintenance. So instead of the $5 off coupons they send you in the mail, I wait for a $10 off coupon here. This time it's even higher - $12.00. I'm guessing that Wal-Mart and the economy are hurting our local Jiffy Lubes. As long as they send these coupons out, I'll keep giving them business!
• Free ice cream! Golden Spoon puts coupons in here for free ice cream, even without a purchase. What a fun treat for my kids during the summer!
• Local pizza coupons and Chick-Fi-La coupons are usually in here too. So I always hang on to those too, just in case.
• A local home decor store that I like occasionally puts in a 20% off coupon, so if there's something I've had my eye on, I wait until another coupon comes around.

So before you through out that junk mail, make sure it's not junk first! It could save you some money! :)

Disclaimer: You aren't saving money if you use a coupon to spend money on something you normally wouldn't spend money on. (i.e. if you normally change your oil and decide to go to Jiffy Lube since you have a coupon, you are actually not saving yourself money.)

Coming up: Fun stuff to do with your kids! What we are doing this summer, fun sites for ideas, freebies, etc. We are being creative to beat boredom, so we will share what we are doing with you too!