First, find someone to pawn your offspring on, I can’t tell you how many times I have been interrupted in with a sweet little voice asking to join in. Next, start a nice hot bath and add some fragrance, my favorite would have to be baby powder found around the house. While your bath is filling up, remove any old nail/toenail polish. This will make them a lot easier to paint after your bath. Grab a good romance/mystery novel and hop in!

After your bath, lather on some nice body lotion. Make sure to place close attention to your knees and elbows. Now would be the the time to paint your nails, apply a mask, taking care of any tweezing that needs to be done. Take your time, you never know when it will happen again.

Give this some thought. Can you spare ten cents for an extra box of crayons, package of paper, or pencils? I’m sure you can. Contact your local school district, and find out how to donate extra supplies. I know the our local grocery stores always have supply drives. Another place to try, would be through your local United Way branch.

Your donation could mean a lot.

First off, an oldie but goodie. The license plate game. Before, departing on your trip, print out a list of all 50 states. If you will be near the Canadian border make sure to throw those provinces on too. This can be played two ways either together or individually. In all of my traveling experience I have yet to find every plate.

Second, would have to be guess how many. Trust me you can make a game out of counting anything. The favorite in our family is guess how many people are on the bridge. Just pick something, whether it be people, cars or heck even cows.

The hit on our road trips has always been the billboard alphabet game. The goal of this game is to search billboards and signs along the road and use the letters to make your way through the alphabet. The only rule is, once someone has used a sign, nobody else can use it.

Hey if none of these help, there is always 20 questions!

First you have to start with the invitations nine times out of ten it is much cheaper to make your own. Just head to your local superstore i.e. Wal-Mart or Target, and stock up on card stock, stickers, glue and markers. Depending on the age of your child, they probably will have a lot of fun joining in the process. Glue bits of confetti, draw pictures, just in the process don’t forget to have a lot of fun!

When it comes to decorations and party favors head to your local craft store, you would be amazed at all you can find. A few years ago, my daughter had a princess party and all the little girls wore crowns with their names on them. I was able to find 8 foam crowns and a container of foam sticky letters for about five bucks. If you are having a large party consider going through Oriental Trading Co, or Celebrate Express, you can by things in bulk at a fairly low price.

Location, Location, Location. My advice is to skip going to the local Chuckie Cheese or similar place for the birthday party. In my experience, they tend to be way overpriced. Consider having the birthday party at a children’s museum, or a park instead. If you choose a park, and it is raining the day of the party, herd the kids to the local McDonalds; you can have the party right next to play land for free.

Lastly, skip buying the birthday cake at your local grocery store. Either make it yourself, there are all sorts of things you can do. Is your little girl into ‘Barbies’ and ‘princesses’? Make her a Barbie doll birthday cake. Or if you’re not feeling that artistic, head to Costco, you can get a sheet cake for under $20.

First off you have to know where to shop. I usually stick with Old Navy, Target, and Kohl’s. These three tend to always have clearance racks. At Old Navy you can always tell what is on final clearance and what still has as chance to be marked down even more. If the price ends in either a .47 or a .97, this is your final opportunity. Otherwise, unless you really need it, you can probably wait a few weeks for the price to be marked down further. I have been known to wait for a pair of jeans to be marked down to $2.97.

Now Target actually has a weekly schedule for markdowns, it varies from store to store, but here is a local schedule. On Mondays electronics, kids clothing and stationary are marked down. Tuesdays you will find domestics, women’s clothing, pets and food items,Wednesday men’s clothing, toys, health & beauty, and lawn & garden items. Marked down on Thursdays are housewares, lingerie, shoes, sporting goods, movies, music, books, decor and luggage, and then on Fridays auto, cosmetics, hardware, & jewelry. Things will be marked down at a progression of 30%, 50%, 75% and finally 90%.

The local Kohl’s has not be open long enough for me to figure out when things go on sale. They do have their Night Owl/ Early Bird Sales quite often though. (3-11pm on Friday and 7am-1pm on Saturday). Even without the sales, their clearance racks tend to be worth the effort.

Some other things to keep in mind both Bath & Body Works and Victoria Secret have their big-semi-annual sales in June and B&BW has another one in February. If you love to thrift shop, most big name companies tend to donate extra stock to charity thrift stores in November/December for the year end write off.

Happy shopping!