I’m happy to have Sharon Picone, founder of Sleep Metro, guest posting on the blog today!

Active play is a parent’s best friend. It develops kids’ physical fitness, confidence and motor skills, ensuring a good night’s sleep for kids—and parents! Any of these ten activities will have your kids quickly falling asleep.

Pro tip: Always follow active play with a calmer activity (like reading or a warm bath) to prepare kids for bed.

 

OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES

1. Walking

Driving saves time, but walking tires your children. It’s great exercise, it may be adapted to little legs, and doesn’t need special equipment. Model healthy habits and togetherness by walking as a family. Harness the competitive urges of older kids with games like Pokemon Go or Fitbit.

2. Water Sports

Swimming, whether in the pool, beach or river, is a great energy burner. Ensure an adult is always supervising! No pool? Turn on the sprinkler! Set your kids loose with water balloons. Younger kids enjoy exploring depth and volume by pouring water from one container to another.

3. Seasonal Activities

Encourage your kids to play outside with seasonal activities. It ensures that they receive vitamin D that is essential to sleep. Visit the beach in summer. See baby animals at the farm or zoo in spring. Go hiking in fall, and ice-skating or sledding in winter.

4. Sports

Schools, recreation centers and community centers have team sports for all ages. Don’t want to invest in uniforms? Join forces with other Moms with children of the same age as your kids. Meet at the local park one afternoon a week for a friendly game.

5. Equipment Play

Balls, cycles, hop-scotch, elastics, hula hoops and skipping ropes don’t require charging after use—but your kids will. Set up an obstacle course with the aforementioned items. As children master one set of skills, challenge them with countless variations. Search on Youtube for tips to take play to the next level.

INDOOR ACTIVITIES

6. Gymnastics and an Obstacle Course in Your Garage

Park your car in the driveway and clear space in your garage for a gymnastics extravaganza. Lay a mattress on the floor and encourage your kids to practice forward rolls, backwards rolls, cartwheels, handstands and tumbling. Older kids can try somersaults.
Arrange items as an obstacle course: use pillows, jump ropes, chairs, paper cups (for kids to zig zag in and out of), balls and small tables (to crawl under).

7. Create a Maze

Using painters tape or flag tape at different levels across a hallway, create a maze that forces kids to squeeze through or slither under the tape and let your kids work their bodies and imaginations.8. Indoor Playgrounds

8. Indoor Playgrounds

If the weather’s bad and space at home is limited, visit a mall or restaurant with an indoor playground. To ensure your kids get the most out of their visit, come up with a challenging obstacle course over the play equipment and time them.

9. The Floor is Lava

When your kids can’t play outside, make your house the playground. Set cushions on the floor, and let your kids jump from one to the other. Combine with tag to expend more energy, or simply let kids enjoy navigating your house without touching the floor.

10. Scavenger Hunts

Malls and supermarkets are great places to burn energy in bad weather. Turn shopping into a scavenger hunt by getting older kids to find items on your list.

11. Dance and Musical Chairs

Turn up the stereo and let your kids get down. If your kids need guidance, try The Wiggles for little ones. Older kids can spend hours rehearsing dance routines found online. Pro tip: Search music videos for appropriate content and ideas.

An old favorite from when I was a kid is a game called “musical chairs.” It was especially popular at kids’ parties. Set up chairs in a large circle. Be sure to have one chair less than the number of kids. So for 10 kids, you’ll set up only 9 chairs. Play music and then suddenly turn it off. Remove a chair after each round until you have only 2 kids and one chair. The last kid standing is out. This game is best with a larger number of kids and is guaranteed to tire them.

Sharon Picone is the founder of Sleep Metro, an online review and informational site that provides savvy, no-nonsense tips for the best sleep possible that’s beneficial to both health and wellbeing. Through in-depth reviews, the site also guides readers to make informed decisions when choosing mattresses and sleep-related products. Sharon lives in Florida with her husband and 5 beautiful cats.

After my initial panic about planning a[n unbudgeted] Walt Disney World trip in a month, and reading everything I could get my hands on about Disney (thanks for sharing your Pinterest board, Amy, and your packing list, Jen), I figured out how to do Disney on a dime. But, what about all of the little, additional things that tend to add up? Well, my friends, that’s where I’m currently at with my Disney planning.

Almost everything you read about Disney World warns against tackling the parks without a plan. With just a month until we leave, the planning part was causing me the most stress. Not only did I need to figure out how to do this trip without breaking the bank, I need to plan for our time in the parks and for, well, the unplannable.

Let’s tackle some of the easiest things first.

Photos

Now, you can spend the money to purchase the Disney Memory Maker — $169 or $149 if purchased in advance — or you can save that money for a nice meal while at the parks by taking your own photos. I absolutely love photography, and especially hate posed photos, so this is a no-brainer for me. I have a decent camera — a Nikon D3100 — so there’s no reason for me not to take our own photos throughout the trip.

While I can shoot in auto mode and still grab great pics, I really want to up my photography game to get the most out of my camera and the best shots I can to preserve memories of this trip. I’ll fully admit that I’ve had this camera for 6 years or so, and have not taken the time to really learn about all of the features and functions. With a few weeks to prepare, I’m using the book many Disney guides recommend — Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. And while I can easily buy this book from Amazon for $15, I’m looking to save on potentially unnecessary expenditures. I was pleased to find that my library system had a copy, and I’m currently working my way through it — for free. I’ll come back to the public library momentarily.

Photography gear

My camera case is bulky, and definitely not something I’d want to bring into the parks, but I still want some protection for the camera I spent I pretty penny for years ago (it was around $800 when I purchased it). A brief look at camera cases, slings and backpacks on Amazon — and how expensive they are — made me look for another option.

I came across Camera Coats on Etsy, the perfect solution for my camera-protection dilemma. For $35 you can get a padded camera coat, which slips over the housing to protect when not in use; you can also add a matching padded strap and lens case, in one of their many fun patterns. In an effort to cut costs, I just purchased the housing cover, or “coat”, and will get an inexpensive padded cover for my strap. So, for $35, you have a stylish, protective cover for your camera, and the ability to use it over and over (I don’t know about you, but I likely wouldn’t have used one of those expensive camera slings after the park because I already have a camera bag). Oh, and because of my Ebates extension, I was able to receive 1% back on my purchase in the form of an electronic rebate – score!

Travel guides

So much can be found online these days, and I didn’t even venture into Disney travel guides until I’d already spent hours perusing different Disney travel sites. I will, however, say that the Birnbaum’s Official Disney Guide that I got from the library (another $20 saved), concisely summarizes everything that I spent hours surfing the Internet to learn. It’s handy, and I definitely recommend grabbing a copy, or getting one through your library, to help cut your Disney planning time down drastically.

I will say that I’m still contemplating purchasing one of the two hidden Mickey guides available on the market — Hidden Mickeys: A Field Guide to Walt Disney World’s Best Kept Secrets or The Hidden Mickeys of Walt Disney World — as a way to occupy my little guy while waiting in long attraction lines.

Park clothing

So, here’s the thing. We’ve not indoctrinated our son with all things Disney (we’re more of a Disney-Pixar family), and I rarely, if ever, buy graphic or character clothing for my son. That being said, I thought it would be fun for the kiddo to have an all-Disney wardrobe for our vacation in the parks. Granted, this is a completely unnecessary expense — I know that kids will have tons of fun no matter what they’re wearing — but I have a little secret to share: Swap.com

I’ve consigned through Swap.com — was able to sell all of my maternity clothing and a box of my son’s outgrown clothing — and I’ve been purchasing from the site for almost two years now. I love consignment sales, and I love the fact that I don’t have to wait for twice-yearly sales to purchase clothing and other items for my son (he recently went through a pant size in two months – Swap saved me a lot of $$!).

I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I was able to purchase the clothing you see above — 3 short-sleeve tees, 2 long-sleeve tees, a Mickey windbreaker and a Toy Story sweatshirt — all like-new and brand-new licensed Disney clothing — for the grand total of $31.70. Yep.

Because of the time of year we’re going, weather can be warm or chilly, and even both in the same day, so I’m packing a variety of different clothing for the trip. I have my own Swap.com order of clothing arriving any day now — I purchased a Gap denim jacket, two pairs of nice capris, a Tinkerbell tee, a Mickey Mouse hoodie and a Mickey Mouse tee for my husband — for $48. So, that’s Disney clothing for the entire family, for under $100 – not bad, eh?

You can save 20% off of your first Swap.com order & get FREE shipping when you shop with my referral link

Well, what about souvenirs and keepsakes, you ask? That’s a topic for another post, but I rest assured, I have some amazing money-saving tips there, too!

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Maybe you’ve been contemplating it for a while, or maybe it just never crossed your mind; whatever the case may be, it’s definitely time to switch to glass storage containers [if you’ve not already done so]!

It began with a party

My slow conversion to glass began when I registered for wedding gifts. I’d long used Rubbermaid plastic containers, but without a dishwasher, plastic food containers were difficult to clean well (and tended to stain too easily). I registered for two sets of Pyrex and have never looked back! (My husband teases me about my Pyrex, but when he’s looking for something in the fridge, everything is stacked nicely and organized!)

And then Mason jar salads became a ‘thing’

When the Mason jar salad craze took effect, I bought a case of the glass jars and loved how easy it was for me to grab a salad when hunger struck. I got into a routine of buying, washing, prepping and packing my salads on Sundays, which allowed me to easily grab a salad throughout the week. The Mason jar containers also made it easy to use little dressing (I’m a viniagrette kinda gal), making mixing a breeze in the self-contained…container. But, as with most things, once I get out of a routine, it’s difficult for me to get back into it.

For about a year, I had a case of Mason jars stored in a cupboard collecting dust, until we bought our new home and installed a chest freezer. Having the additional freezer space has been a dream, and my cooking life has never been easier. I try to make one soup every week or two, and make them in large batches so that I can freeze portions for another meal.

Compelling reasons to switch to glass storage

Because I abhor plastic, I began looking into alternate containers for freezing, coming across stainless steel and glass. Amidst my research, I came across compelling reasons to use glass, for both refrigeration and freezing, from the Glass Packaging Institute:

• Glass is nonporous and impermeable. This means no staining and more importantly, no stink.
• Glass has almost a zero rate of chemical interactions, which means your food and/ or spices stay as fresh as the day you packed them.
• No worries about BPA or other chemicals leaching into your food.
• Glass is 100% recyclable. One. Hundred. Percent. Recyclable. It’s a sustainable packaging product with an indefinite life.
• 80% of glass that is recovered is made into new glass products.
• A glass container can go from your recycling bin to the store shelf in as little as 30 days.

Armed with this information, my eureka moment hit — I remembered my case of unused Mason jars — I didn’t have to invest money into new containers! Not only do I now freeze soups in the containers, but I use the containers for easy refrigerated food storage. While our refrigerator looks big on the outside, the two-door model really doesn’t hold much in the refrigerator portion. Instead of awkward containers in varying sizes, I now save space by using Pyrex and Mason jars for leftovers — if you have OCD when it comes to fridge organization, you’ll love using Mason jars for easy, orderly food storage (and be happy to have ditched the cling wrap)!

My love of glass is now spilling over into other areas, as I continue to decorate and organize our home. I’ve always loved seeing bathrooms with clean lines and apothecary jars for storage. My master bathroom, while small, has been my longest ‘project’ to-date, and the only room we’ve painted so far. And while our color scheme is not light and breezy —  it’s goldenrod and grey — I’m happy with the way it’s coming along. The only thing I’ve yet to sort out is storage. Anyone out there a storage expert?

Under the sink storage has ALWAYS been difficult for me to master, and I’m getting tired of rummaging for cotton balls, acetone, face wash and the like. So, I’ve added a small utility cart to my already small bathroom, and have been purchasing glass jars for storing items. I geeked-out when I discovered the glass jars above from World Market — they’re perfect for what I’m planning to use them for, easily organized because of their shape, come in an array of sizes and totally affordable! Even better, World Market gave me a referral link, so you can save $10 off of your purchase of $50!

Another great option are the Vardagen jars from IKEA. I picked up a few of the smallest jars for $1.99, and one of the large jars for $5.99 (currently housing all of my nail polishes). These will also be perfect for organization in my larger bathroom.

If all goes well with our little master bathroom (or my little master experiment), and I’m happy with the result, I plan to expand glass storage to our large bathroom, which features a walk-in linen closet. At the moment, I have pretty fabric bins holding everything from cold medicine to band-aids, which means I have to take the containers down from the shelves and rummage through to find what I’m looking for. My plan is to have glass containers lining the shelves, making it easy to see what’s-what.

Everything’s better in glass

No, really, everything’s better in glass. I remember when beverage manufacturers began using plastic bottles for individual soda servings (sometime when I was in high school); the switch from glass bottles to plastic ended any enjoyment I got from an occasional soda. These days, I drink seltzer water by the liter, and it’s always a special treat to buy Perrier or Voss in glass bottles. And of course, there’s nothing like enjoying a nice cold beverage in a beautiful glass (I like leaded crystal the best).

So tell me, my fellow fans of glass, how do you use glass containers around your home?

 

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