With the weather getting nicer, we tend to look for anything at all to do outside to enjoy it. One really excellent activity is to hop on your bike and take a family bike ride together. Below are some excellent reasons why you should. Family Time Most families today are guilty of not spending near enough time together. Sometimes it’s just from lack of ideas of what exactly to do together. Taking a bike ride is something all kids enjoy, and parents can too. See the town together, talk to others out and about, and maybe stop for some ice cream too! Burn Calories With video games, computers, and other indoor activities being so handy, our society has become a bunch of couch potatoes. You don’t need fancy exercise equipment or pricey gym memberships to get a good work out. Remember how active you were as a kid? And all it required...
We all need a little break sometimes, right? There’s a lot of game sites out there, but my favorite place for cheap games to download (free of spyware, I might add), is Big Fish Games What makes Big Fish one of the top places to download games is the fact they add new games daily. It’s not hard to find favorites and games you’ll spend hours on in your spare time. Below you’ll find a few of my favorites I’ve played, and gone back to multiple times. Top Cheap Games to Download My taste may be different from your when looking for cheap games to download, but these also happen to be pretty popular games on the BigFish game list. I’m not big on “time management” games, but rather strategy type games that make you think. There may be a few “race the clock” type games within it, but for...
What easier way to keep a toddler entertained than with a big book of stickers? They’re easier on walls than crayons, that’s for sure (and if you have never had the pleasure of scrubbing crayon off the wall, may I just say you are lucky… so far). Sticker books aren’t hard to come across. You can run to your local dollar store, but if you want to bring out the big books of stickers, you might need to look elsewhere. We did some digging and found some excellent sticker books for toddlers available on Amazon, and have listed some of them below. Melissa & Doug Sticker Collections Each of these featured sticker books contain THOUSANDS of stickers for a little bit of nothing. By far one of the best prices we’ve ever seen on sticker books. Plus you have you choice between pink, blue, purple, and green books for...
Idea Queen is big on bargain shopping. Why pay full price for the “latest and greatest” when “tried and true” is just as cheap? Sure you could visit your local dollar store for quite a few of your crafting supplies, but if you want to get serious, you may have to do some digging online. We’ve compiled a list of our favorite places to shop for cheap craft supplies online. Each of these stores have excellent ratings, are trusted, and listed for both their prices and selection. Do feel free to comment and add your own to this list! CreateForLess Probably one of the largest craft supply stores online we’ve ever seen. Doesn’t matter what kind of crafts your in search of, chances are they’ll have it. Everything from scrapbooking to sewing, to casual crafting. There’s some pretty good deals...
When the snow starts coming down and the kids are cheering “Snow day! Yay!”, most the time us parents are wondering how we’re going to survive yet another day trapped inside. The kid may not be crazy about all these snow day ideas, but they can be sanity savers for moms. Plus it makes use of “lost day” so to speak. 1. Bring out the Games Have a Wii? Special computer games? Other game systems? Or maybe (*gasp!*) actual board games? Bring em out and get to playing! Have competitions, see who can beat who in how much time. Just spend some times together! (I recommend the Wii the most, of course, since it will keep you all active AND playing together. Snow day doesn’t have to mean “sitting on your rear” day!) 2. Clean the House Take a look around, are there projects you have put aside for “one...
I was wandering around some blogs and forums a little lost today, and stumbled on a blog post on Eccentric WAHM Bloggers all about Fitness in Your Day to Day. There’s three really awesome ideas here, and it got me thinking. With it being winter and reaaaaaally cold outside, going for a bike ride or a quick trip to the park is just out of the question. And now that I have one kid at home, finding some indoor activities is going to be pretty important. So let me add some fun (and productive) activities to do: 1. Wii! Eh, I know we don’t all have a Wii. But I really, really do think this is an important addition to any household. It’s not “just another game system”, but is just AWESOME for physical fitness. I think this is an absolute must for homeschoolers. (On a side note – we went to the “real bowling...
If you have some older kids that play the computer alone (but still supervised), we stumbled on a great site for the older ones wanting to get into community based sites that are safe. KidzWorld is a safe community based site featuring chat rooms, message boards, games, and loads of activities. The chat room was the biggest draw for my 9yr old boy, who was finding chat rooms he should NOT be on more than once (there was a few times the computer was taken away from him for a week). But this chat room on KidzWorld I have no issues with him being on, since it’s filled with other kids 13 and under. We’ve gone over the rules of chat rooms since it’s not a “you can only say these pre-written statements” type of chat room. No, it’s a real chat. I had some big concerns when he first started not knowing what they’d...
Alright so I’m a geek. What started as a game for the girl has become one of mom’s favorites. I was absolutely in love with the first We Cheer, and now I’m even more addicted to the second one. Now granted the girl DID play the first one, but she’s not exactly the most coordinated kid out there. Some of those moves were just too difficult for her, so we ended up playing all the levels together so she could pass them. Maybe that was a bit of cheating, but she was trying her hardest and getting exercising done (the most important part right?). The second one, however, is even better. There are now three levels for each song instead of two, and it’s really only the last level that’s extremely hard. Kids can now unlock things a bit faster, and enjoy more than just a handful of songs. Now while admitting this...
I never thought 15 degrees would feel this warm, but after spending this much time with below zero temperatures, it really does. And how excited am I to see the temperatures climbing to above 30 this week! Time to get out and about, that’s for sure. I feel thankful we escaped the cold snap with just a frozen pipe or two. There was at least 2 or 3 days last week we couldn’t take showers, run the dish washer, or wash clothes, but we survived. Thankfully the main pipe didn’t freeze, so we could still use the bathroom and had hot water for minor stuff. Of course we’re not in the clear yet. It’s still only January and still Iowa. Snow, ice, and cold still lurks around the corner. As does a house that may NEVER be clean, and more “I’m bored” cries. Since we got a boat-load of toys and entertaining...
My daughter loves crafts of any kind. Hand her a piece of paper and she does some pretty amazing things with it. Also a tad of a mini-scientist, she loves “making experiments” that usually end up with her in trouble. So for Christmas I got her the Scientific Explorer’s Spa Science Chemistry Kit off of Amazon. It was an absolute hit, but lacked in some supplies. When Elements Bath & Body landed in our inbox as a new advertiser on Idea Queen, it got me thinking…and surfing. Little kits that make just a handful of various items are fun and all, but they’re also just a tease for kids that really want to dive into doing stuff like this as a real hobby. Maybe not a business, but a hobby at the very least. I guess I hadn’t really looked to close into places that sell supplies, simply because they quantities...
