Frugal Friday -- family fun outdoors

With gas what it is, and our summer vacation already enjoyed (by the way, Washington DC can be a rather frugal destination since the vast majority of the sites have free admission, or prepaid by our taxes, depending on how you want to look at it), we have spent a lot of family fun time at home this summer.

Some of our fun has really been work, or maybe school, but the kids have really enjoyed getting dirty right alongside me in our garden and planting flowers around our house. I used my 'stimulus check' to buy a gift card for the super-grocery store that we typically shop at and the card came with a bonus 10 percent to spend on general merchandise. So, I spent some of that on plants for our yard: blueberries, lilies, perennials, etc.



The kids have all really gotten into planting and researched how to make cherry trees (that site is a bit detailed and technical in spots, but quite helpful) grow, what soils different plants need, and when and where they will thrive the most. As far as the cherry trees, we learned we live in an excellent climate for them, so we'll see if anything comes of all the research and work. Right now the seeds are 'stratifying' in our fridge.

Many people dish out loads of money on gardening, but I have found that other gardeners are very generous with their overgrowth. I have received onions (scallion type), raspberries, and Jerusalem artichoke from others and have passed along the same. Free, fun for the kids, and nutritious, it doesn't get much better than that.

Aside from gardening, we have also had a lot of fun in the water

This may not be the safest set up, but we run our garden hose to the top of the slide and slide down onto the tarp (in this case, the cover from our old pool). Homemade water slide. The older kids (11, 8, 6) slide down and in between slides the little ones (4 and 3) splash around the puddles at the bottom.

Wonderful, home grown fun.

For more frugal, family fun, check out either one of Crystal's blogs.