Frugal Summer Fun for Kids Part II

Ah summer! There are so many fantastic things for kids can do in the summer.  As I talked about in in Frugal Summer Fun for Kids Part I the backyard can be a wonderful place full of inexpensive fun. . . .

Until it rains and you all are stuck inside for a week.

Or like my sister you live in the south where the weather is over 100 for days on end.

Sometimes you need some exciting activities that take you out of the house, but into the air conditioning!

Read a Book! Take kids of all ages to the library and check out some new books, videos or games.  See what kind of summer reading programs your state offers-just google “summer reading program (state)” and you’ll pull up plenty of information. The one here in NY is always themed for the whole state.  Most of these programs reward children & teens with a prize for books read.  Libraries aren’t the only source of reading programs. Barnes and Noble and Scholastic also have programs.

Watch a Movie.  Of course you can grab a DVD for free from your local library, rent a recent release from your local Redbox or subscribe to Netflix. . . but why not get out of the house, make it an event and enjoy some free air conditioning.  Most cities have a discount or dollar theatre that you could enjoy-but even better are the various FREE movies that are being offered to kids around the country.  Regal Cinemas and AMC Theatres both offer a free summer “movie camp” in select cities (see if they include yours!) and Cinemark offers a “10 Movies for $5″ deal.

Learn Something New. There are lots of national retail establishments that offer free classes for kids during the summer.  Bass Pro Shops are offering a full range of free seminars and classes  in their “Bass Pro Family Summer Camp“.  Apple is offering free apple computer classes this summer (wish I was young enough to take those!).  Micheal’s craft store has “The Knack”-a website designed for family craft fun that also lists their in-store free family events.  Check out your local library, community college or state park for free classes and activities that may be offered. Our library has craft classes for teens & tweens and basic computer classes for all ages. BCC (Broome Community College) offers a full slate of summer continuing education classes such as photography, herbs, gardening, photoshop & yoga. These classes aren’t free, but are reasonably priced and may be just the thing for a bored teen.

Hit the Lanes. Have you heard of the “Kids Bowl Free” program? This was a new one to me. . . You register on the site and kids can bowl 2 free games every day, all summer!  Adults can register and pay a one time fee for an all summer pass so they can play with the kids if they like.  I’m actually really disappointed that there are no bowling alleys near me offering this program.

Go to the Museum. There are many free and inexpensive museums out there.  I may live in a very small town, but within a 30 min drive we have a model train museum, an antique car museum, several art gallery/museums and a science museum.  Most of these have either nominal charges or are free to the public.  Target is sponsoring some free museum days nationally, as does Bank of America (must be a customer)-check and see if there are any in your area! Additionally in more metro areas museums may have free days, either monthly or annually. Do a google search for free museum and your town/city to see what pops up!

Next time (next week) I’ll share with you some fun indoor activities that you can do at home.  You can also read all about my fun outdoor ideas in Frugal Summer Fun for Kids Part I, or listen to all the fun summer ideas that Lynnae and I came up with on our Frugal Coast2Coast show about Summer Fun

Do you guys have any other great inexpensive fun ideas that will take you out of the house in the summer?

Best of: Free Mulch

I’m away at a blogging event today-the Stouffer’s Lets Fix Dinner Blogger Roundtable. So I’m pulling an oldy but goody from the archive. It is just getting to the season where we clean up and prettify our flowerbeds here upstate, so republishing this post on how I was able to get a ton of free landscaping mulch this time last year seemed very relevant!

We had several trees cut removed at the Frugal Upstate household a couple of weeks back.

Now Yankee Bill is a pretty handy guy when it comes to a chainsaw and all, but when it comes to pine and maple trees that are 4 or 5 stories tall, and impeded by buildings and power lines-well, it’s time to call in the experts. And a good thing too-the large pine was way taller than any bucket loader they had-a guy actually had to scale the thing toting a chain saw and cut the limbs off while clinging to the tree. It was entertainment not only for my household, but also apparently for the 5th grade social studies class that could see the guy out their classroom window from down the street!

The trees were cut up and lowered to the ground and then chipped on the premises with their chipper. I told them that I’d like to have some of the chips. This is what they gave me:

Yankee Bill came home and said “uh, you think you have enough wood chips?” Yeah-I think that will do me for a while!

And the guys told me that any time I wanted more chips just to call the company and let them know-they’d be happy to drop me another load.

Now of course this doesn’t look quite as regular as the store bought chips-there are some little bits of visible pine and various sizes of chips. Also they are fresh. That worried me a bit, so I did a little research on the web (my favorite place to be y’all!) to see if that effected anything. Apparently as new wood chips and sawdust decompose they use a lot of nitrogen. There was some concern in the articles that I read with it yellowing your plants if you didn’t add additional nitrogen. No problem-I had a bag of rose fertilizer I had purchased about 2 years ago. When I put the chips on any of the beds, I liberally toss some fertilizer on and sort of mix it around.

There is one area where I am creating a bed alongside the house. There is a single small conifer there. I’m mulching the entire area and leaving it for a year. If it saps too much nitrogen from the grass I’m trying to kill underneath it, I’m not particularly concerned.*

As for the stuff left in the pile-I’m not worried about it-a year of being rained on and just plain aging will take care of the problem. Meanwhile the kids are using it like a huge sandbox/mountain. We’ve been taking more baths and showers than usual and I’ve had to pick pine out of Princess’s hair.

So if you need mulch, an don’t want to spend the money on that expensive stuff in little bags-try calling your local tree cutting service. You may be able to either pick up free mulch or else have it delivered to your door for nothing!

Oh, and I also read that you should never use fresh black walnut as mulch-it could kill your plants. So do inquire what types of trees are in any free mulch you get!

*Note: My front flower beds are mulched with the remainder of the small truckload of mulch we bought last year. Yes, I actually had my poor hubby move a pile of wood chips from one house to another. Hey-we paid for that! Anyway, now the front of the house had a very nice 4″ deep mulching on it, without the worry about new wood chips.

Free Knitting Pattern Sites

I like to knit. There is something soothing and sort of Zen about the clicking of needles and knowing that you are spending that time making something that is (hopefully) useful. Personally I prefer fairly mindless knitting. Something I can sort of do on autopilot without having to think to hard about it-so I’ve made a lot of scarves and afghans and such. I’m branching out into washcloths and the occasional sweater or shrug.

Currently I am working on a project for my sister’s birthday. I can’t mention exactly what it is here, since she might check in, but I’ll post pictures and discuss it after she gets it.

Since there is nothing more frugal than free, here are some free knitting pattern sites I’ve found:

About.com has a lot of patterns, both with and without photos.
Knitting pattern central has TONS
Crystal palace yarns
Dawn’s Dream Designs has a few, there is a tutorial at the bottom for making your own wooden knitting needles
Mary McLean has some very interesting unusual patterns
The Knitting Fiend has pattern generators-you fill in all the variables for size, yarn gauge etc and it gives you a custom fit design-for free. How cool are people???
A site about knitting/crocheting prayer shawls along with some patterns
Bev’s Country Cottage also has tons of patterns, including a lot for charities (seems like another cool lady!)
Dishcloth Boutique has tons of dishclothes, like pages and pages of them to include a really neat little thing where you get a preview of the pattern in the middle of the page when you scroll over the link for the pattern.
Knitting Nonsense also has tons of washcloths, to include ones with all 50 states in the US, the UK, New Zealand, Austrailia etc, and all of the letters of the alphabet as well as baby feet, animals etc etc etc. . . .

Enjoy!