When I was a kid, I had Shrinky Dinks. I had a Smurf package, and I remember coloring them with the little colored pencils included in the kit, and placing them into the oven to watch them shrink up. We had a few casualties. Papa Smurf in particular, started curling at the edges when I popped him in the oven, and he wasn’t ever the same. Once you baked your Shrinky Dinks, there wasn’t much left to do with them.

I haven’t seen Shrinky Dinks in the stores in years, but I found them online! You’ve got to be really imaginative and come up with your own designs. It’s probably too much work for kids today.

The boy has decided he wants to be Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween. I decided to search online for a deal on a costume, and I haven’t found one yet, not even on eBay! All of the decent Captain Jack costumes I found were $30 or more, plus shipping. Maybe I’m cheap, but I can’t see spending that on an outfit that will be worn for a few hours, unless it’s for me I know he won’t want to wear the same costume again next year, so I’m getting a single year out of each costume. It’s times like this that make me wish I could sew - I’d just whip up my own costume. Sadly, my sewing skills are limited to fixing buttons.

What happened to the days when kids would dress up as bums or hobos with old clothes from around the house?

Our big purchase this week is my husband trying to convince me to plunk down $500 for my son’s next session of hockey. Oy! Leave it to my kid to pick one of the most expensive sports out there for boys his age. I thought it was bad when the equipment cost us $200 - little did I know that we’d soon be paying more than that just for the lessons.

I should be thankful that he hasn’t outgrown any of his equipment yet - not even his skates. There’s not a lot of used hockey equipment around in the hockey resale market or stores like Play It Again Sports for boys his age and size, so it’s good that he’s not outgrown anything. Yet.

I took my oldest back to school shopping this week and spent 2 hours and $200. She’s fun to buy for still, because she doesn’t push for things that are bordering on inappropriate. Her school prohibits t-shirts that have slogans and sayings and characters on them, which I really appreciate. It makes it very easy to turn down requests for t-shirts with dumb sayings on them! I think we’ll need to have another shopping trip once the weather turns cooler to stock up on jeans and a few long sleeved shirts. She must have grown another few inches, because all of her jeans are a bit too short. I wish jeans came with adjustable lengths, just like they come with adjustable waists!

We spent much less on the other kids, as they were uniforms and had plenty in good shape that still fit from last year. Maybe $50 each?

How much did you spend on your teen or tween for back to school shopping?

It may only be August, but my son is already thinking ahead…to Halloween! He’s considering his costume choices very carefully. Right now, being Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean is at the top of his list. Have you seen how expensive that costume is though? I priced it in the Disney store at the mall and it’s $50 for the whole thing - more for the accessories. Sheesh! So of COURSE I’m going to be looking for Disney costumes online and hoping I can find a cheaper version of what the Disney store is selling. There are bound to be a few stores cheaper than Disney! Being able to shop online is definitely a time saver for Halloween costumes. (Of course, my son will probably change his mind about his costume choice 10 times between now and October 31st!)

We had friends over this weekend, and they brought their new baby along. This is such a fun time for new parents! Tiring, but fun and exciting. It’s not any fun however, to go through your pregnancy stressed out and worrying about how you’re going to pay for your bundle of joy. A lot of folks without insurance pay for their doctor and hospital visits out of pocket. Did you know that there’s a form of pregnancy insurance you can buy to assist you with those costs? With the maternity savings program, you’ll be part of a network, which gives you the ability to pay your doctor, lab, and hospital a discounted rate, instead of full price. Why pay more when you can pay less, and enjoy these few months before the sleepless nights begin?

When you entered middle school, what school supplies did you need? I remember taking paper, a few notebooks, folders, a pencil, a few pens, and a Trapper Keeper. My daughter needed all of that (minus the Trapper Keeper) plus a 3 inch binder, tabbed dividers, a calculator, a flash drive, a binder hole punch, as well as paper towels, hand wipes, and other things the teachers specifically requested. I spent $200 on school supplies this year, which includes backpacks and lunch boxes, thankfully. School is free, but it ain’t cheap!

After thinking I was done with back to school shopping, we returned to Target and dropped another $100 last night. Thankfully, that included 3 backpacks and 3 lunch boxes, but it also included a calculator, special binders and dividers, and color coded folders. Most of that was for my oldest, who is going into middle school. The biggest ripoff - orange folders, which were a specific request on her supply list. Every other color folder was 10 cents in the school supply section, but they didn’t have orange. We found them in office supplies, but those folders (same size, same style) were 42 cents!

I thought that I had seen it all. After 3 kids, I’ve seen every type of crib, every type of fancy stroller, and every kind of new accessory out there - right?

Wrong.

Introducing Baby Bling, for those times when a plain old baby accessories! If your little darling is too good for a plastic pacifier from the grocery store, deck the little darling out with a pacifier embellished with over 400 crystals! You think I’m making this up? I offer visual proof that such a thing DOES exist, and it can be yours for just $120:

You can also buy pacifier clips, nail clippers, rattles, and onesies with bling on them. I guarantee you’re going to see one of those celebrity babies in People or Us Weekly with one of these baby accessories from AristaBrat.com - avoid the rush and send Nicole Richie an early baby shower gift!

(The mom in me hopes that the crystals are VERY firmly attached so they don’t become a choking hazard.)

DisneyOutlet.com is having an end of summer clearance! By using the coupon code “OUTLET15” you can take an additional 15% off the clearance prices. That means bathing suits for $11, kids beach chairs for $5.94, swim totes for $5.09, and beach towels for $4.24! It was about this time last year that I stocked up on beach towels for my own kids, and then I held onto them til Christmas and gave them to the kids as a gift. The Disney beach towels are EXTREMELY high quality - super thick, and the design side is soft and won’t look worn out after a few washes. In fact, I’ve tossed most of our old towels and we’re using the Disney ones a majority of the time.

For only $4.24 per towel, I’ll probably buy a few to stick in my gift closet. Pair them with a pool toy and you’ve got a great birthday present for a kid for less than $10. It’s the perfect gift to take in hand when your kids get invited to those school birthday parties and you really don’t know what to get!

Ooh, I just noticed the PJ Pals are on sale too - $3.39 for a pair of character pajamas! Can’t beat that with a stick! I love the short pants style too, because it’s too hot in Florida for my son to wear long jammies to bed most nights. If you buy these, I’d recommend getting them at least one size bigger than you’ll think you’ll need, as they are very form fitting.

I realize that there’s a trend amongst retailers to start selling things for the next season as early as possible, but it’s a bit unsettling to walk through Target and see back to school items already out. The children’s departments are full of uniforms, and the patio sets have been cleared out to make way for displays of lunchboxes and Trapper Keepers. I’m planning on buying the kids only what they need to go back to school next month, because I know it’s only a matter of time before those uniforms go on clearance! In fact, a few weeks after school started last year that I snagged white polo shirts for my son for less than a buck each. At that price, I didn’t care if they came home dirty!

Here’s a thought for manufacturers of children’s clothing. Put one of those adjustable waist doo-hickeys in EVERYTHING you make. Like adults, all children are not the same size. And sizes vary greatly too. The only thing that kept my son in long pants this year was being able to adjust the waist to cinch up the waistline on his skinny little body. We had the same issue shopping for shorts for my daughter this weekend. Yes, I could buy her elastic waist shorts, but when you’re almost 10 years old (practically a lady!) those are a teeny bit babyish.

When I was in high school, we had a local number called the Homework Helpline. The people staffing it were teachers and older students, and they had copies of all the books used by our county, so if you were stumped on your Algebra II assignment, you could call and get help over the phone.

Homework answers are a little more high tech now. StudentofFortune.com is a website for students, tutors, and anyone else - you can either get help, or get paid to GIVE help. Students can post questions to answer - homework, proofreading, etc, along with a price you’ll pay for the help (the pricing stars at 25 cents per answer)

Anyone can sign up to answer questions and collect that fee for helping someone. You can read questions submitted via the website, email, or even an RSS feed, so if you’ve got a time sensitive project or homework, you’ll get help pretty quickly. Sounds like a neat way for a smarty pants like me to make some extra dough!

Yesterday was a big cleaning day around here - we stripped the sheets off ALL the beds and remade them. Even the bunk bed, which I hate doing - it’s such a beast to climb up on. Everyone has nice, fresh bedding though. All of the comforters are clean and the winter blankets are packed away. I do love the bedding we got for each of the kids rooms - for the girls, I got a more grown up style of teen bedding. Gracie’s is pink and green and Catherine has an aqua set that’s reversible. For Matthew’s bunk beds, I bought 2 comforter sets in a denim and plaid mix. I ditched all of the cartoon character sheets and got the kids nice, solid colored sheets in a higher thread count too.

Now, if only they’d MAKE their beds!

So your friends had a new baby, and you want to give a gift that reflects your hip, fun personality? You think cutesy stuffed bunnies and lambs in pastel colors are lame? How about giving a cotton monster? Each one is totally unique, and made of recycled fabrics (sheets, blankets, pajamas) and hand made by Jennifer Strunge. No two are alike! She has a blog where you can keep abreast of her latest creations. This entry shows the cotton monsters with a human, illustrating just how large they are!

This week, we’ll be getting delivery on some of the bedroom set pieces shown above (click to see the image full-sized), for our oldest daughter. Since we moved into our new house last May, she’s been using a hand me down set that was more for a younger girl, and my husband and I wanted to update her room, and give her something that could take her through middle school and high school. We visited a local Rooms To Go Kids and picked out the set (it was the first one we saw, and we kept going back to it after looking at everything else!) and it’s coming on Friday. Rooms To Go, for those of you who don’t have one, is a chain that sells middle of the road furniture at great prices. We could have bought all wood, or higher quality furniture, but we would have paid a LOT more. And honestly? For a kid who won’t be using this furniture in 7 years because she’ll (hopefully) be off at college, I didn’t want to spend $3K on kids furniture. We purchased our living room couch, loveseat, and recliner, as well as our mattress, from Rooms To Go and we’ve been very happy with them.

Anyway, I digress. We got the bookcase headboard and footboard shown above, as well as the dresser and mirror. We also added this 2 drawer nightstand and computer desk and hutch. I think what really sold me on the set is all the storage! My daughter is a reader, and the bookcase headboard will be a great place for her to put all of her books. And she’ll still have plenty of shelving on the desk to use also. If need be, she could even take the dresser and desk with her after college…

Technorati Tags: bedroom furniture, kids furniture, teen furniture, Rooms To Go, Rooms To Go Kids

I’ve got a gift closet in my house. When I’m out and about, if I find something that’s on sale, or clearance, that would make a great gift, I buy it and hold on to it. That way, when I’ve got a birthday or an occasion where I need a hostess gift, I’m all ready. My latest gift closet find was a Twister Game Rug Set at Kohl’s. It was on clearance for $10, marked down from almost $40, so I snagged two!

The game set consists of a bag (heavy duty plastic) with a rug folded up inside it - big enough for kids, but not too big that you can’t easily store it. Printed on the rug is the twister game we all grew up with, and also included in the bag is the twister “spinner” so you know when to put your left foot on red and your right hand on yellow. It’ll make a great gift the next time we get invited to a birthday party for a friend at the kids school!

Technorati Tags: Twister, games, birthday gifts, Kohls.com, Kohls, Kohl’s

Every year, my kids make some sort of homemade gift to give to their aunts and uncles and grandmothers. We happened to be in Joann the other day and we found the perfect craft for the kids to make this year - painted picture frames. Joann had a whole aisle of small wooden ornaments ready for painting, and we found some that were a frame that you can insert a smaller wallet sized picture into. Perfect for the school pictures! And at only 50 cents each, we could afford to buy for the whole family. We just had to buy 4 bottles of craft paint in holiday colors (only $1 each) and we had a fun craft for the kids to make and give for Christmas.

My soon to be eleven year old daughter’s Christmas list is quite simple. 2 DVD’s, a CD, gold earrings, and a canopy for her bed, specifically, a blue or aqua canopy. Wouldn’t you know it, I can’t find one in brick and mortar stores? I’ve checked all of the department stores, as well as Linens N’ Things and Bed, Bath, & Beyond. I did find this one at Pottery Barn Teen, but honestly? I wasn’t planning on spending $80 on this canopy! My other option is eBay - I’ve found 2 sellers offering the a canopy that fits the bill there, and the bidding starts at $30. Neither is offering Buy It Now so I’ve got to do this the old fashioned way. Wish me luck!