Five Budget Friendly Winter Night Activities
Jessica Glaze • February 3, 2015
It's COLD outside (well, most places) and that can make it hard to come up with budget friendly fun for the family. Most indoor activities cost a whole lot more than the outdoor activities available in the summer and if you are on a tight budget, that can be frustrating and make the winter feel even longer. So, the Glaze Brigade is going to let you in on our favorite Friday night activities that don't break the bank.
1. Red Box movie rental and a 5 dollar "Hot and Ready."
Going to the movies on a Friday night is always fun and might be ideal but at 12.00 a ticket, your night starts out at a minimum of 24.00 and that does not include the kids or dinner. Redbox comes in at about 1.20 per rental so when you add Little Caesar's Pizza at 5.00 per pizza to that total, you can easily have a fun Friday night in for under 20 bucks. You will actually have enough money to buy some candy and popcorn when you are at the store picking up your movie. And did you know you could reserve your rental online? Reserve online and you won't be stuck driving all around town trying to find the movie you want.
2. Dine in and go out for dessert.
If you are like me and you don't mind cooking, this gives you a chance to save by eating in but you can still get out of the house after a long week of routines and schedules. Make something easy like burgers or spaghetti and then jump in the car and drive to your favorite local ice cream shop or even a restaurant. My family loves Chocolate Molten Cake from Chili's so sometimes after dinner we head over to Chili's and just get dessert! Order two molten cakes to share between a family of 4 and you will spend less than 20.00 and walk away full and happy.
3. Costco.
This might seem crazy but I think this is our favorite Friday night activity. Costco is usually a madhouse on the weekends but on Friday night, it is fairly empty. This is great because I get help with the kids while I grocery shop for the upcoming week and the kids get to watch fun demos or grab a few pre dinner snacks (free samples). After we check out, we stop at the Costco cafeteria and grab 1.50 giant hot dogs, 2.00 giant pieces of pizza, and 2.00 ice cream cones. Our family of four can easily stay under the 20.00 mark and that includes dessert. Disclaimer: If you grocery shop, you will obviously spend more than 20.00 but groceries should come out of a different part of your budget anyway.
4. Crock Pot meal and craft night.
No mom (or whoever is in charge of dinners at your house) wants to cook and clean while everyone else is enjoying Friday night so a great alternative is a crock pot meal. Your meal will basically cook itself and clean up is as easy as putting dishes in the dishwasher and rinsing out the crock pot. After your super easy clean up, try one of those 5,000 crafts you pinned on Pinterest. I always pin away and never actually get around to trying any of them, but here is the chance. The other night, we made Valentine's for all of our friends back in California. It was fun and pretty much free! I spend 1.00 on a box of Valentine's Day cards and we already had stickers and markers to decorate the cards.
5. The mall food court.
Okay, so the food a the mall food court isn't the healthiest option but its usually pretty delicious. The mall is a fun place to spend a Friday night, especially if you have little ones and you pick a mall with a play area, a pet store, or a toy store. Eating at the mall food court gives everyone the chance to eat what they want, which is always fun, and it is also stress free for the person that is usually in charge of decision making. This might be the most expensive option on this list, but you can still stay close to a 20.00 budget and have a bunch of fun. After dinner, walk around and window shop. The mall in a wide open space and if it isn't super busy, I let the kids run around and act a little wild. Bonus: The mall has free heat in the winter and also free air conditioning in the summer!
We hope this helps you enjoy the rest of your winter! Feel free to comment below with your favorite budget friendly indoor activities.
Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
Four kids, I have four kids! Sometimes (well, every day if I’m being honest) I have to remind myself that I have FOUR kids to be responsible for. If I’m not forgetting to keep an eye on my mischievous 2-year-old, then I’m walking out the door for dinner without dropping a jar of baby food into my bag. (Fries for dinner never hurt anyone, right? That’s what Mr. August survives on once a week at least.) Life as a parent can be chaotic sometimes. #thisisparenthood Thank God my two older kiddos are basically self-sufficient otherwise we would never be able to leave the house. Being responsible for four other human beings (Sometimes five if my husband is in town, am I right ladies?) is so hard!
It’s no secret that I am no fan of winter. If you live up north like we do now, you know just how cold, cold is and I can barely survive the frozen temperatures. Even though I would happily leave behind the cold, but there is nothing I love more than Thanksgiving and Christmas! Best holidays of the year, hands down!
It has been three years since we left behind our life in California. Three years since we made the announcement that we were moving to Canada. Three years since we started a new adventures as immigrants in a country that is so close to home, yet so very different. And now, after three life changing years, we are on to our next adventure.
Eli is 5.5 months old, rolling left to right and every other which way, so that means it’s time to ditch the swaddle. *Que the ugly cry.* If you didn’t know, we love swaddling in our home. Rusty and I can count the number of times we have ever had to wake up more than twice a night with one of the three kiddos on our fingers and we thank swaddling for that luck. We start swaddling from day one and we use that as a basis to establish great sleep habits from the beginning that last forever. Sadly, once the skill of rolling is learned, it is no longer safe to swaddling and the transition from swaddled to un-swaddled can be rough. Thankfully, we found the Nested Bean sleep sack this time around and the swaddled/un-swaddled transition has gone perfectly smooth.
The Glaze Brigade spent the second to last official weekend of summer (which is kind of a joke because summer never actually arrived here in the GTA) at Center Island and we loved it! I’m actually a little bummed that we have lived here for 3 years and only just decided to make the trip on the ferry over to the island.
We are just three weeks away from the start of the next school year and I am so not ready! There is nothing I love more than the freedom of summer. No school schedules to follow, flexible bedtimes, endless weekend adventures, and daily trips to wherever we can get some sunshine. Sadly, all of that is about to end and I am already planning our next summer.
Since moving to Toronto, the best part of summer is getting outside. Our days are usually filled with trips to the playground, our near by amusement park, riding our scooters around the neighborhood, or taking a fun road trip, but even in the summer, there are days we are stuck inside. Sometimes we spend those rainy days cuddled on the couch, watching a movie and eating junk food, but another fun rainy day activity we enjoy is visiting our local mall.
I was just a little surprised to learn that Carter would be starting kindergarten, at the ripe old age of 3, just a few months after moving to Canada. I considered putting her in a preschool a few days a week, but never did I think I would be sending her to an all day, every day, kindergarten class in a school that holds kids up to the 8th grade. Cue the mommy freak out. Of course, Carter loved it and I had nothing to do worry about.
My middle child, Monroe, was born with a severe tongue tie, it was actually so severe that he couldn’t swallow. For the first week of his life, we had no idea that his entire tongue was attached to the bottom of his mouth (behind his bottom gums), but over and over again he would choke and sometimes even turn blue. Rusty or I or a nurse would have to suction his airway to get things cleared out. It was the scariest time for me as a parent.
Facebook is filled with groups of moms complaining about the lack of help they get from their husbands. Either dad has never changed a diaper, he doesn’t help pick up toys, dad doesn’t help discipline, or he flat out cannot keep the kids alive if he is left alone. I understand that it can be completely frustrating to get no help from the one person that should be helping you the most, so I am going to share with you a few tips that I’ve used to encourage my husband to be a hands on dad.