This past week was an extremely hot and humid one in North Alabama, so a lot of our fun events took place either in water or inside a nice air conditioned house.
Pool time and cookies
My sister was kind enough to let us come and swim at her house last week, so we decided to bring an edible craft to make with her kids for after lunch snack. *This edible cookie playdough was really fun to make (and eat) and the dialogue about what the chocolate cookie dough really looked like (which according to my nephew was dinosaur poop) was hilarious!
Cost: Basically free because I already had all the ingredients on hand
Slushies
I took the kids to get slushies at Sonic after we ran some errands one day. I usually don’t get anything because I prefer water, but I had a terrific vanilla diet coke that day which really hit the spot on a hot summer afternoon. **FYI: You can easily make your own slushies at home with a blender, Kool-Aid, and ice to keep this a basically free treat.
Cost: $5
Pizza and game night
Just in case you didn’t know it, Papa John’s has a wonderful program that rewards you for ordering your pizzas online. We had earned $10 over the past few months, so that plus a great deal they were running, brought our total to only $3 for two pizzas. To make it even more fun, we decided to have our family game night that night as well. We played Rat a tat cat and Apples to Apples which made everyone happy.
Cost: $3
Splash pad
We actually went to two splash pads last week. The first one was an impromptu visit mainly due to the park being so hot that Ben begged to go to the splash pad side. The old, mean mom in me said no because we did not have a towel, but the cool, fun mom(who very rarely appears) said what the heck…okay. **Bonus: the mist from the fountains kept me quite cool on my somewhat shady park bench
Later in the week, we went to another splash pad to meet up with some of our favorite friends. We made sure to bring along a lunch to eat in the car on the way home as well, so that made it a totally free event for us.
Cost: $0
**We have really been enjoying this frugal challenge. I think we all tend to forget that there are so many ways to have fun and not have to spend a ton of money (or any) on many activities. With a little creativity you can easily have loads of fun on any type of budget (Oh…and if you are not too creative, Pinterest has you covered!)
The Thrifty Educator 