Backyard Treasure Hunt

I have been trying to hang out with the kids more these days.
I'm a stay at home mom and that may sound like a hard thing to NOT do since we're together every day but that doesn't necessarily mean that I "hang out" with them.
I clean around them.
I clean up after them.
I help them get things out to play with and pick things up.
I even sit in the same room and read or surf the web but play WITH them? Hang out WITH them?
Yeah, it's not really my thing.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being around my munchkins.
That's part of why we have four of them!
But I struggle to play WITH them so I decided to come up with something that would keep us both entertained for a while.

Enter: Backyard Treasure Hunt!
With a few things I already had around the house...empty egg cartons, kid friendly jewels (aka pirate booty), leftover Easter candy, and spare change off the night stand... we were in business!
I did the creating and planning for them and they did the exploring and the hunting. (Oh! And it was educational as the kids learned about following maps)... This one was a win-win-win!

 

Homemade Catapult

 

 

As is often is the case, this is not Krystle original idea. I actually found the link for this guy here at Random Scraps which sent me to Spoonful for directions. I noticed that Spoonful didn't offer any pictures with their directions so I took some pictures as I went in case any of the steps were confusing or if you're a visual person like me. Hope it was worth it for you!

Happy Thursday!

DIY Building Blocks

Do you remember the cardboard bricks that only the best church nurseries and day cares had?
I loved those things and thought they might be something CJ,  Miss Mak, and Bean would like too.
<enter my inexpensive solution with big impact>

This was the perfect time of year to start our collection as boxes flowed in to our house with the Christmas gifts. Each time the kids opened a gift that came in a box we tested the sturdiness of the box and if it passed the stability test we set it aside to wrap in wood grain contact paper which we purchased from Home Depot for about $7 a roll. The set we ended up with took three rolls of contact paper and we love the result! 

They were easy to put together and the kids love them just like I had hoped. One of the great things about the set we created was that we picked the box sizes we wanted and so we are able to make castles and forts that Hubs and I can fit into with the kids. 

{Miss Mak the princess and CJ the ferocious fire breathing dragon}

{the princess showing the dragon who's boss}

Looking back we should have given this to the kids for Christmas and saved ourselves some work finding other gifts but our pain is your gain as I highly recommend giving this a shot if you have builders in your home. You can start saving boxes now and have a huge stash for next Christmas!  

 

 

And... if you're not up for making boxes or don't have access to larger boxes, my sister was able to find sets of 40 for our kids for Christmas from Melissa and Doug. They are smaller but also much sturdier since they have cardboard supports in the middle whereas our boxes are empty and can't have weight put on them and smaller size means easier to store. {Another painful lesson learned.}

Happy Building!

Pantry Rescue for Bored Boy

CJ is four.
He gets bored easily.

He loves to build.
Pantry to the rescue!

Marshmallows and toothpicks.
That's it!

Happy Thursday!

America's Cheapest Family

Without giving too much boring detail, I'll just tell you that Hubs and I have been looking for ways to pinch our pennies these days...
With a small student loan, two more years of a car loan, sub par savings account, a rapidly growing family, and hopes for making upgrades in our new house we have decided to prioritize for real.
Don't get me wrong, we have been trying to slim the budget for a while now but every day life manages to sneak in surprise expenses like the one just last week to fix the setting on my engagement ring because the prongs weren't looking so hot and I was afraid of losing a diamond. Cha-Ching!

So anyway... several of my searches for a better budget led me to the same place...

America's Cheapest Family: Gets You Right on the Money

I've included the link above but I just headed down to the local library. (The Economides would have been proud!)

This baby is full of ideas, some brilliant, others wise, and a few seemed downright crazy but in the long run doing some silly things (like bringing a crockpot on vacation to heat dinner in the bathroom during the day) doesn't seem so bad when you think about how much money you're saving per meal and renovations that brand new kitchen at home you worked so hard to pay for. 

Just thought I'd share. 

Happy Monday!

 

Tag Sale Love!

Tag Sale. Garage Sale. Yard Sale. Rummage Sale. Buying Someone Else's Junk.
Call it what you will.
You can find some great deals if you keep your eyes open, are willing to stop at a place that looks like it only has junk, and take just a minute to actually look at what people are selling.
Today was no excpection.
Every Saturday morning Hubs and I pack up the munchkins and go to our favorite local breakfast place.
On the ten minute drive home we almost always have our eyes peeled for tag sales.
(Well... I do because I love the idea of the unfound treasure and Hubs does because he loves me.)

This weekend the kids and I found a lovely little home who had so much stuff out in the driveway I assumed they were moving. That's usually a great sign. I quickly discovered that this mamma was just dying to get stuff off her hands and, had I pushed her enough, would have likely paid me to take the entire stock off her hands in one fell swoop.THIS, my friends, is the best sign of all. So good, in fact, that I wanted to share my treasure with you as an encouragement to keep your eyes peeled as the fall season comes and tag sales start popping up again.

So let's tally...
Polish pottery (tea pot, pitcher, casserole dish, two bowls, a square serving dish, creamer, and sugar bowl)
Bumbo for Baby J
Tupperware Shape Ball
2 unopened 100 piece Toy Story puzzles

Total Spent: $22.00 (yes, that's twenty-two point zero zero)

And this wasn't our first great find of the year...

2 booster seats for the car (4 year olds and up) for $5 a piece
Original C9 Christmas lights, enough for the entire house
Vintage glass ornaments for the tree

and don't' forget about the thrift store finds when the tag sales are over...
Remember this? 

I also want to throw out that I think tag sales and things like it can be great for kids!
A few times I have given the kids fifty cents or a dollar to get what they'd like. They learn about the value of money and it's their first step into economics.
Plus, sometimes kids get lucky because they're so darn cute. Miss Mak has walked away with a full sized doll stroller and CJ with several puzzles, games, and a Leap Frog Spanish/English matching game.
I also am partial to sales where the parents give their kids a spot of their own to sell their own items of their choosing and let them pick their prices (which are usually more than fair).

"Tag Saling" is something my mom and I used to do together and I am really excited to have my kids doing it along with me!

A Few Ideas for Driveway Fun

I'm a New England girl.
We have beautiful sunny days all summer and I have to force myself out of the house to enjoy it but as soon as it hits below 80 you can't keep me in!

So the other night I was trying to find things that would keep the kids entertained outside as dinner time approached and they started to get wrestless.

Enter sidewalk chalk.

I've been working on letter sounds with CJ, letter recognition of lower case letters, and recognizing numbers and decided to make it a "teachable moment".

Though the excitement wore off quicker than I had hoped, I had him on the hook for a little while and used that time to get him moving and see what he knows.

I wrote the letters of the alphabet in a circle and called them out for him to run to and scribble over once he got them right. Next time I'll be more purposeful about mixing up the letter order (I didn't think of that until half way through) and I will only use lower case letters since he's got the upper case down pat.)

We did the same with numbers and now that he seems to be figuring out 6 and 9 we I'll go up to 20 and not just 10.

A friend shared the idea of giving drawing prompts which she found on, where else?, Pinterest and that actually proved to be more fruitful than I expected. It may not look like much but getting CJ to draw without help is incredibly difficult. This time I drew a house and asked him to fill it. He promptly asked me to draw a garage on it. What a guy.

I didn't forget Miss Mak. She is starting to recognize her name when she sees it written so I wrote all of our family member's names on the ground to see if she could pick hers out.

I also gave her gross motor skills a workout by drawing a path on the driveway to see if she could maneuver her tricycle around. I was pleasantly surprised that she managed to stay on it for the most part. I'll make it more challenging next time.

CJ came up with a game of his own too. It's his own version of basketball but he hasvarious strictly adhered to rules and requires that you dribble the ball for at least 5 minutes before you can shoot. Rules or not, this keeps him happy for a while.

Bean, of course, crawls all over the place and, in a very cat-like manner, will occasionally stop and look pretty just for me.

So whether you let them run amok or try to make it a learning experience, the driveway can be lots of fun with just a few basics. 

Happy Weekend!