It’s time to make some summer-time memories! (and of course, as cheap as possible)

I officially want this kid to join our family, he is the cutest thing ever!

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And now that you have watched that adorable summer-time video, let’s talk about fun, cheap things to do with your family this summer.

• The Library! We always love the library but during the summer it gets even better. From science fun to drumming to puppet shows to a Star Wars Day – so many fun, FREE things to do. And do not limit yourself to the Athens Library drive a little further to the Oconee County Library or to the Madison County one. Each one has a different summer schedule so you can find something to fit your family.

                                           * Oconee County Library Calendar

                                           * Madison County Library Calendar

                                           * Athens Library Calendar

•  Sandy Creek Nature Center offers many family activities throughout the year but even when there is not a scheduled event the Center itself is worth going to. My kids can explore for hours and it’s FREE!

Their next scheduled event:

Snake Day 2014

  Join Sandy Creek Nature Center for Snake Day on June 7 from 12pm to 4pm . See lots of live snakes, make a snake craft, play snake games and more. Several speakers will be presenting information on snakes too. Food is available on site (Shane’s Rib Shack & shaved ice) and more.
This year; authors Whit Gibbons, John Jensen, Carlos Camp, and Matt Elliott will attend. These experts will answer questions, do presentations and sell and sign copies of the book “Amphibians and Reptiles of Georgia”.
Admission is $3/person for ACC residents, $5/person for out of county. Visitors under 3 years of age are free.

• No pool in your backyard? No problem! Athens has 5 swimming pools/splash pads that your family can enjoy and super cheap too! Day passes are $1.00 per person but if you think you will be enjoying the pools all summer long then I highly recommend getting a family (up to 4) pool pass for $30. You can purchase the pool pass at any of the locations.
  

  The kids enjoying the Memorial Park pool!

The kids love the splash pad at the East Athens Community Park!

•  Georgia Museum of Art hosts family days once a month and they are FREE! The next one will be on Saturday, June 14 at 10am.
  

  Check out the beautiful southern pottery in the exhibition “Women, Art and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise” upstairs, then create and decorate your own pot in the Michael and Mary Erlanger Studio Classroom using air-dry clay. Join us at 11 a.m. in the galleries for a special interactive gallery games tour.

• Cheap kid movies at local theaters – yes, please!

University 16 Summer Movie Series
$1/admission Tues/Thurs at 10am

 

Carmike Summer Kid Series –  Seats $4.00 includes admission, small popcorn & drink Thursdays at 10am

• Skating is always a cool way to beat the summer heat. 🙂 There are several great skating rinks nearby and most offer summer deals.

Here are the specials for Fun Galaxy Athens:

TUESDAY: 1-5p.m. / PRICE: $6.00 Summer fun session.

TUESDAY: 5-8p.m. / PRICE: $5.00 It is open for anyone to attend. It’s a great session for elementary age kids.

THURSDAY: 1-5p.m. / PRICE: $6.00 Summer fun session.

THURSDAY: 5-8p.m. / PRICE: $5.00 All You Can Eat Pizza with your paid admission. Summer fun session.                                    

FRIDAY: 7-11p.m. / PRICE: $9.00 Friday night is kid hangout night. It’s basically the best blend of Hip Hop, Rap, and Pop. It’s just a BIG party to get your weekend kicked off right.

SATURDAY DAY: 12noon-4p.m. / PRICE: $7.00 Welcome to our birthday parties. Every Saturday morning it’s time to throw the biggest parties with HUGE prizes given away all morning. Don’t worry, you can still show up even if it’s not your birthday because this session is for the whole family.

SATURDAY NIGHT: 7p.m.-10p.m. / PRICE: $10.00 It’s time for family night at the Galaxy. Every Saturday night it’s on. FREE PIZZA and all the fun your family can handle. You don’t want to miss a single Saturday night.

*Take $2 off if you have your own skates except for Thursday and Saturday night sessions. All kids must pay to enter. We do have a $1 admission charge for any non-participating parents. All prices include skate rental & taxes. Sorry but NO checks.

Great Skate in Jefferson is another skating local rink that offers summer specials – and here you go:

Great Skate in Jefferson

• A summer must in Georgia is the Stone Mountain Laser show. It has been revamped this year with more lights, more lasers and more music. We started our summer out this year by visiting Stone Mountain and it did not disappoint. The only cost is $10 to park, the laser show is free!

Stone Mountain Laser Show

• Kids Bowl Free! Yep, you heard that right (disclosure: you do have to pay for shoe rental) you get 2 games of bowling per child for free per day! And all you have to do is sign them up at www.kidsbowlfree.com. There are over 1,050 locations to choose from, the closet one to Athens is in Lawrenceville at Stars and Strikes – that place is amazing by the way! We did this last year and have already signed up for this summer.
  Please use my email msmattox@gmail.com in the “referred by” field.  We’ll both be entered to win some cool prizes including iPads and a trip to Walt Disney World!
  

  The kiddos bowling last summer at Stars and Strikes.

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This list will, hopefully, help you get your summer started and as the summer progresses and I find more free, cheap things to do I promise I will share. I am always on the lookout and please share your great ideas as well!
Have a safe, memory making summer!

Frugal Friday – Black Friday

Friday’s are going to be all about Frugalness! Oh yeah, saving the moo-lah! Money, Money, Money – saving that green stuff!

A few weeks ago we shared what  our family skips to save a little dough, and now on Friday’s we are going to dive further into ways we all can save some money. It may be short and sweet or may be long and boring. 🙂 But we want to help others SAVE THAT MONEY!

Today, we are going to talk Black Friday! Don’t fret, you still have two months.
Two whole months of strategic planning, baby!

We usually start in the  beginning of  October (which is next week, craziness),  finalizing our Christmas list. Then we start scouring the sites for deals and keep an eye out for the leaked Black Friday ads. They always come out early! Last year the first leaked ad came out on October 11th, this year, since Black Friday is not until November 29th, it may be a week later. Our favorite site, the one we always recommend, is gottadeal.com. They  are great for not only Black Friday but also deals that come out throughout the year.

We love Black Friday, we use it not only to find a great deals but as a date night. Yes, we get our kicks by bargain shopping and fighting the crowds. We are a strange pair. 🙂

Strange pair 🙂

Some years we get all of our Christmas shopping done on Black Friday and some years we go to people watch and buy almost nothing. The deals have to be really great and rock-bottom prices for us to buy them. One of the many great things about gottadeal.com, is that you can search for what you are looking for and it will tell you every store that will have it for sale on Black Friday and the prices. We love this feature! By the time Thanksgiving rolls around we don’t even have to look at the paper ads because our plan is already in place. On a side note, we really do not like the fact that stores are opening on Thanksgiving. It is called Black Friday for a reason! Just our two cents for what it’s worth. 🙂

Here is a list of what we do to prepare for Black Friday (you know we love those lists, well…Melissa 🙂 ):

1. Prepare early….now is a good time to start, you still have two months!

2. Make a list of what you will be looking for.

3. Use the internet to find leaked ads. Do not wait until Thanksgiving to prepare!

4. Search for the best prices. I really like Wal-Mart because they will price match, even on Black Friday! We hope they do not change that. Our strategy is to minimize the stores that we go to. If we can get almost everything at Wal-Mart by price matching, that’s what we do.

5. Write down all the opening times for each store, make a priority list of what you want to purchase and which store has each item and then compare. If what we really want is at Target and it’s the only place that has said item, that is our first stop. If Best Buy has an item that we kinda want but not high priority, they may be one of our last stops. It’s all about strategy!

6. Get your sneakers ready!

Lace those bad boys up and GET READY!

7. Have FUN! We aren’t always able to score what we are after but we never fret, it just wasn’t meant to be.

8. Get a lot of sleep the night before, take a nap if you can and grab that mug of pure caffeine.

9. If opening time is 4am, be there at 2am or earlier, if the item is  going to be in high demand.

10. Take a partner or a group. It is a lot more fun when you have someone to share in all the mad-ness!

And here is a word of advice: If you hate crowds, traffic, and no sleep, stay home and wait until Cyber-Monday. There are always great deals on this day as well and you get to shop in your ‘jammies, if you choose, in the comfort of your home.

Consignment Sales: We don’t care, We love them!

That’s right, we do! This past Saturday was hopping to one consignment sale to another and we loved it (or Melissa loved it, Chris just came along as a supportive hubby :).)

Our first stop was at Cornerstone Consignment Sale , we were there at 7:30am and were the second to enter the doors at 8am. 🙂 We were able to snag some great items there.

Like these Gap jackets that Lydia loves to wear. We paid $5.75 for the pair.

This picture does not do this vest justice. It is beautiful and cozy! Brand new Gymboree vest for $2.50.

We also consigned some clothes this year for the Cornerstone sale and we did great! We took almost 200 pieces (clothes, shoes, bows, dress-up clothes) and came home with less than 30 items. They do a 70/30 split so we made $262.15 and their portion was $112.35. Not too shabby! We really like consigning with Cornerstone because  100% of their proceeds benefit area ministries in Athens, Atlanta and the world and to be selfish we always do better consigning with their sale than any other. Plus, if you consign you are able to shop earlier than the public. But if you really want to get in earlier than the public then become a volunteer. You can get in up to 5 hours before the public. I have done this in the past when my kids were in need of a new wardrobe and loved being able to get 1st picks.

Their next sale will be in their new building on Lexington Road. Click the picture for more information about consigning, shopping and/or volunteering.

After leaving there we headed to Fairytales Finds. This was only our 2nd time going to this sale, therefore, we are not as familiar with the ends and outs. We were able to get some very nice clothes though. They had more boutique type clothes so the prices were higher than Cornerstone but we felt they were still priced reasonable.

We bought our nephew this Gymboree sweater jacket for $2.50! It looks brand new.

We bought Lydia the most adorablest 2 piece corduroy outfit with her initial monogrammed on the front. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a good picture of it but we will when she starts wearing it this fall. It is red/black perfect for rooting on the Georgia Bulldogs. It was the most expensive item we bought – $14 but for 2 pieces plus already monogrammed still a great deal!

Both of these sales started on Thursday but we waited until Saturday to go when many of the items would be half-priced. This was true for both sales – anything to save some extra moo-lah.

Our consignment sale finds – 18 pieces of clothing for $69. That averages out to only $3.83 per item. Some of the brands we were able to snag: Gymboree, Gap, Old Navy, J.Crew, Abercrombie, Crewcuts. All of the items were either new or excellent used condition.

We love going to consignment sales and are always able to score with some great finds. If you are like us live on a budget or just like to save your money check out some of these upcoming consignment sales in the Athens area:

• Fairytale Finds Kids Market: Sept. 12 -14, 2013, located 8352 Jefferson Rd., Athens, GA
• Kindermarket: Oct. 3 – 5, 2013, located at YMCA on Hawthorne Ave., Athens, GA

You can also check out these websites to find upcoming consignment sales throughout Georgia: Kids Consignment Sales and Consignment Mommies.

We are now more than ever ready for Fall so our kids can start wearing some of these great finds! They will be stylin’ and profilin’! 🙂

Things our family skips to save a little dough

And we all can learn ways to save a little dough. What works for our family may not work for yours but just might lead you to think of things you can start skipping. We read Young House Love’s Skip It post and some things that work for them (like giving up fabric softener, no thanks) are not things that would work for us but made us realize that our family has it’s own skip it list. 🙂

1. Cable/Dish – We gave this up several years ago and never looked back. It was the smartest skip it decision that we have made. We subscribe to Hulu and Netflix, each $7.99 a month for a total of $16 versus $60 – $70 a month for dish/cable. Very wise decision.
2. Dry Cleaning. Wash, dry, wear – that is our philosophy. No dry cleaning bills for these fam!
3. $7.50 – $12.00/per person movie ticket – We’ll pass thank you. We will take the kiddos to the $2.50 movie theater on occasion but our whole family can do that for the price of one ticket at the big movie theater. We like our money way too much to hand over $60 for our family of 5 to see a movie. Especially if we wait a few months we can see it for a 1/4 of that price. There are rare occasions where we will splurge but it is so rare I can’t even tell you the last time we did it.
4. Paying full price. This is an obvious one if you know us but we had to put it in the list. We use coupons, sales, thrift stores, consignment sales, basically anyway to avoid paying full price we do it. This also includes eating at restaurants and entertainment.  We use coupons and/or special deals to save money whenever we can. Last summer we went to Six Flags for less than $50 for our family of 5. Amaze-balls I tell you! 🙂
   

   Cornerstone Consignment Sale is where we find great name-brand clothes for our kids for super cheap. It starts this Thursday! Click picture for more details.

5. Car Repair Shops. This one is hard to avoid unless you have a handy dandy person in your family like we do. Chris does all of our car repairs which saves us a ton!
6. Gym Memberships. We have tried before when they were offering major promos but we just can’t fork over that kind of money each month. We use videos, walking around our neighborhood and chasing after our kids for exercise.
7. Manis/pedis. Unless we are going somewhere fancy schmancy the girls in the family do their own nails.
8. Haircuts. Well, we don’t actually skip haircuts but we do save a ton of money on them. Chris does his own hair and most of the time the boys. Melissa gets about one haircut a year and Lydia about the same. Lydia’s latest haircut cost a whole $10 and it was the best haircut she has ever gotten!
   

   Lydia’s $10 haircut!

9. Excessive driving. We always try to maximize our adventures into town and not make multiple trips. If we have an hour or two wait in between activities then we head to the library instead of driving all the way back home.
10. Pet Grooming. Chris has become a pro at grooming our long-haired Chihuahua, Abby.  No paying someone else what we can do for free!
    

    Ty and Abby

11. Family Pictures. We have in the past paid someone to take photos for us but we have gotten pretty good at taking our own now.
    

    Our Christmas photo taken by….us! 🙂

12. A cup of Joe. No $5 latte’s for us.
13. Newspaper/Magazine subscriptions – thanks to the internet we can find all we need to know online.
14. Expensive Vacations. We love traveling and visiting new places but we aren’t going to do it unless it fits our budget. Thanks to Groupon, Half Off Depot, Living Social, multifamily vacations and camping we can still enjoy vacations without breaking the bank or maxing out a credit card.
15. Fresh Flowers. Don’t get us wrong we love to look at them and will cut our own flowers to make an arrangement but we never spend money them. We have been married 11 years and can count on one hand how many times we have had store/flower shop flowers in our house. That $50 can be used elsewhere. 🙂

So there you go, that’s our skip it list. If we thought about it we could probably come up with at least 10 more but these are the biggies.

So what is on your family’s skip it list?

Tax Freeeeee weekend for Georgia!

Tomorrow begins the tax free holiday for clothes, school supplies, computers, etc. in Georgia. Check out this site for eligible tax-free items. The official dates are August 9th and 10th. It works great for me because my kids don’t start school until next Friday but the timing seems really unfair for everyone else. All the other area schools started to school this week, so those parents can not fully benefit from the tax break. Sure, they can wait for some clothes, shoes, etc. but not for school supplies. I mean, could you imagine your child going  to school empty handed and telling the teacher my mom is waiting until the tax-free holiday to buy my supplies. I don’t think the teacher would appreciate that very much and might even write a nice note sent to you. I think if my kiddos had already started I would get the necessities and wait until tax-free for the majority. Of course, I am a saving, crazy lady and if I can save a buck or two I will! Yes, even a dollar!

Thankfully, though my kids start after the tax-free weekend. So I have my game plan ready for this weekend! If you are headed out I advise you to get one too. Its usually a mad house – think Black Fridayish.  This weekend may not be as bad, though, since so many schools have already started.

I have my coupons printed, my list is made, I am ready to go!

My coupon stash for tax-free weekend

I am not planning on using all the coupons I printed but if I think I MAY need it I print it. Better to have it than not. Of course, if I don’t have a coupon I usually won’t buy from that store. I am that coupon crazy when it comes to clothes and shoes. Never, ever pay full price. My philosophy: buy on sale AND with a coupon! Plus, tax-free – I am ready to save some moo-lah!

The easiest way to find coupons – GOOGLE! I usually just type: _(store that you need)_printable coupon and search my way until I find one. I also subscribe to a ton of email lists. Sure it makes my email overflow but when I need a coupon I usually have it in my inbox. Check facebook, most stores have a facebook page and periodically have coupons on their page.  Don’t forget the Sunday paper sales ads! Coupons galore, especially for the big mall stores. Now go find your coupons for this weekend!

I hope you all have a great, money saving, tax-free, enjoyable shopping experience!

May the sales be ever in your favor! 😉