Family Fun

Lots of Great Seattle/Tacoma Area Groupons this Weekend!

by Christy on February 19, 2011

Groupon has a lot of great offers this weekend for those you of you that live in the local Seattle/Tacoma area. You can pick up the following deals this weekend. The first two would be great for families.

Get a family 4-pack to the Seattle Children’s Museum for only $15. ($30 value). Expires in one year, you may buy multiple as gifts.

Pick up discount admission or a yearly membership to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. You can choose from a one-day ticket for only $6 (reg $12), or a yearly membership for only $37 (reg $75).

There are also 2 other great deals food deals too:

Get $15 at the Pita Pit in Tukwila for only $7.

Get a dozen cupcakes from Trophy Cupcakes for only $16 ($33 value). They have 2 Seattle locations, and 1 in Bellevue.

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Download 21 FREE Valentine Craft ideas for Kids

by Christy on February 1, 2011


You can download 21 FREE Valentine craft ideas for kids. My daughter has been asking me to have a craft day, so I am hoping we will find something fun to make.

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Garden d’Lights: Free Entry on Select Dates

by Shauntel on December 6, 2010

Garden d’Lights is the transformed Bellevue Botanical Garden with over 1/2 million lights turning it into a winter wonderland.  Tickets are normally $5 per person and children 10 and younger are free.  However, they have a few free entry dates – Dec. 6-8 and Dec. 13-15.  Hours are from 5pm-10pm with last admission at 9:30.  Print your tickets online before you go by clicking here.

They also have a “Plan your Visit” page that has a garden map, parking tips, directions, and other helpful information.

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Homemade Holiday: Make your own Christmas Countdown

by Christy on November 9, 2010

I am starting off the Homemade Holiday series with instructions on how to make your own Christmas Countdown. It’s an advent calendar of sorts, only instead of little goodies each day, there are fun activities that your family can enjoy together. One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is spending time together as a family, but it can get so busy that sometimes we don’t take the time to stop and enjoy it. This countdown helps our family slow down and enjoy Christmas more.

The countdown is made with paper and has magnets attached to the back of each number, so you can attach it directly to the front or your refgrigerator. You could also attach them to a cookies sheet and hang it on the wall if you wanted to. On the back of each number is a special activity that our family will do for each of the days before Christmas.

Here’s how to make your own Christmas Countdown

I started out with a piece of Making Memories Christmas scrapbook paper with 25 numbers printed on it,  I cut out each of the numbers.  Several scrapbook companies make numbered paper for Christmas, so you should be able to find one at a scrapbook store or even Michael’s. If you can’t locate any paper, you can easily use number stickers or print numbers out using your computer.

I added some fun embellishments, like buttons, ribbon and bling to dress them up a bit. I use Glue Dots to attach all of my embellishments, they are wonderful for attaching items that are bulky.

Next, you will add magnets to the back of each number. I used the magnets made specifically for business cards that have adhesive already on one side. If you are like me, you get lots of magnets with advertising on them, you could even use those.

Once you have all 25 days cut out and the magnets added, you will want to add the fun activiites on the back of each one. I got my calendar out for this, because we already have some activities planned, like going to the Nutcracker, so I made sure to have those activities coordinate with the correct number.

Here is the final project! It’s nice to look at and it will help your family share some fun family time together during the month of December.

Need some ideas for fun things to do during your countdown to Christmas? Here are the items I have on the back of mine (some of these are local events).

  • Read about the birth of Jesus
  • Go Christmas caroling
  • Bake Cookies
  • Watch Charlie Brown Christmas
  • Bring Treats to neighbors
  • Go to Snowflake Lane (FREE event at Bellevue Square)
  • Drive around and view Christmas lights
  • Visit the Giving Tree & choose some names – Get gifts
  • Family Christmas Party
  • Church Christmas Party
  • Read our favorite Christmas story
  • Watch a Christmas movie
  • Make Chex Mix
  • Make Chocolate covered pretzels
  • See the Nutcracker
  • Decorate the Christmas tree
  • Make Christmas cards
  • Drink hot cocoa with candy cane whip cream
  • Go see a holiday movie
  • Watch the Grinch that Stole Christmas
  • Leave a surprise on someone’s doorstep
  • Share Christmas memories
  • Go to Zoo Lights
  • Take donations to the Food Bank

Variation: If you would like to make something like this to have as more of a traditional advent calendar, you could put a clue on the back of each number to where the treats or goodies are hidden in the house.

Welcome to Thrifty and Thriving! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or have the once a day email delivered to your inbox. My Facebook Page is an excellent way to stay up-to-date on the hottest deals.

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Join the Barnes & Noble Kid’s Club – it’s FREE

by Christy on October 29, 2010

You can sign up for the new Barnes & Noble Kids Club for FREE.   It sounds like there are lots of great FREE benefits for signing up.

Here are the club benefits:

  • Welcome coupon for 30% off the list price of any one children’s book or toy
  • You’ll get a $5 reward everytime you purchase $100 in-store and online
  • Free cupcake from our café for all your children’s birthdays
  • Monthly email newsletter featuring even more savings

Head on over HERE to get your kid’s signed up!

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Seattle Area Readers: Sign up to be a Game Playtester for Forrest-Pruzan Creative

by Christy on October 27, 2010


For those of you in the Seattle area, you can sign up with a local game creating company to be a playtester.   The company is called Forrest-Pruzan Creative, and they are located in Seattle.  Most of the playtesting happens at their laboratory in Seattle, so local families are the best candidates for their playtesting club.

Playtesting is lots of fun, you get to play the games before they are even released to the public. Plus, you get to see the thought process that goes into all those fun games you play. When the game you test is finally released – you get a copy of the game for FREE!

Forrest-Pruzan has created such games as:

What do Playtesters do?
When you are assigned a playtest, you will head to their Seattle office and play a game or two. You share your insights on what you liked about the game. Sometimes you share your thoughts on whether the instructions were clear or not. It’s really low key and LOTS of fun! They have games for all ages, from pre-schoolers to teens.

What’s in it for you?
When you playtest a game, once they game is released, you get a copy of the game for FREE!   We recently received some of the games we playtested, it’s always fun to add a new game to your collection – especially when it’s FREE!

Do you want to sign up?
Signing up is easy, if you live in Seattle or any of the surrounding areas, send an email to testing@forrest-pruzan.com. You will need to email your name, phone number and zipcode.

Make sure you like Forrest-Pruzan on Facebook, so you can keep up-to-date on the gamemaking and upcoming playtests!

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Discounts to PNB’s Nutcracker

by Christy on October 21, 2010

I have always wanted to take our family to see PNB’s Nutracker at McCaw Hall, and this year we will finally be attending. I just purchased my tickets!  My teenage boys are already practicing their “I am so excited to be going to a ballet with my family” faces.  The Nutcracker is not a cheap event, so I did my research and found a couple of ways to save some money.

15% Discount on Select Days and Times:

98.9 KWJZ is offering a 15% discount on select days and times. Just head on over HERE to get all the details.

Discounted Gift Certificates at Costco:

You can purchase 2 $50 gift certificates at Costco for $79.99. That is a 20% savings. Just figure out how many gift certificates you will need ahead of time and purchase them at Costco.

Who has attended the Nutcracker before? Did you love it?

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Giveaway: Cranium Scribblish

by Christy on October 14, 2010

One of our favorite things to do as a family it to play games. We were thrilled when we had the opportunity to try out the new Cranium Scribblish game.

Cranium Scribblish is a hilarious new game that’s like a cool mashup of the old schoolyard favorite, “The Telephone Game” and Pictionary. Simple, outrageous, and a ton of fun. Everybody grabs a card, chooses a caption, and then tries their best to draw it in 45 seconds. From there you pass on your drawing (now with the original caption concealed in a cool Cranium scroll) to another player, who has to write a caption for your sketch. This mayhem continues around the room with more sketches and captions until the end when everyone tries to figure out how “this” became “that”. Oh, and if you’re not exactly a Picasso, no problem. Stick figures work just fine.

When you have finished drawing and making captions four times, you then get to see the final picture that was drawn. You have to guess which one was yours. It’s amazing how messed up the pictures can get. I was only able to guess mine once! We had so much fun playing this game and we did a ton of laughing. My teenagers agreed this would be a great game to play with a group of their friends.

Here are a few samples of some of the games we played.   On one of them we started out with “Kevin brought his pet shark to school” and it then progressed to:

  • “I take my pet shark to school while my head is on fire”
  • “My hair catches on fire when I look at sharks”
  • “Rabbit on fire vs. Shark”

This is a fun game for a group, and it was fun to play with all ages (we had ages 10, 13. 15, 17, old & older – my husband is “older”, I am just “old’).  Our youngest was too young to play, but he had fun passing out the cards, rolling the dice and starting the timer for us.   We highly recommend this game for some great family fun!    Would you like the chance to win a copy of Cranium Scribblish? I have the opportunity to give a copy of the game to one reader. Woo Hoo!

Here’s how to enter:   Just leave a comment letting me know what one of  your favorite Cranium games is to play as a family (Cranium Cariboo is one of our faves!)

Additional entries: (leave a separate comment for each extra entry on this blog post)

  1. Follow Thrifty & Thriving on Facebook
  2. Subscribe to Thrifty and Thriving via email or RSS
  3. Follow Thrifty and Thriving on Twitter

This giveaway will end on Thursday, October 21st at midnight.  Good luck!

The Scribblish, product information and additional game to give away were all given to me by Hasbro through MyBlogSpark.

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