It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

While there may not yet be snow, there’s an awful lot of Christmas-y stuff going on lately to herald the season. London’s night time Christmas parade was last weekend and, as you can see here, we attended the annual kickoff to shopping season. Despite a few glitches, gaps in between floats, and cars somehow not following the traffic barricades and dangerously driving down Dundas Street prior to start of parade, it was a hit. The temperatures, which hovered around 10 to 15 degrees Celsius all day beat last year’s hideous snowstorm that we foolishly braved. My daughter this year purchased a pair of dollar store binoculars so she could be first to spy Santa way down the road and while I was skeptical they did in fact work remarkably well. So in a quick ode to dollar stores I am going to point out all of thriftymomma’s excellent dollar store bargain deals, tips and pointers. Oh and stay tuned for an Xmas-y giveaway….
Dollar Stores deals I can’t live with out for my family:
1. Birthday and other various event cards. $1.
2. Paper plates and birthday party supplies.
3. Adorable Dora, Hannah Montana and SpiderMan Ziploc baggies for lunches.
4. PlayDoh. It’s the real deal unlike some of the other craft junk they sell there.
5. Wrapping paper and Xmas gift bags.
6. Sketch books and construction paper. My children go through this like it grows on trees. Get it?! I can hear you groaning. Enevelopes too.
7. Tiny character trinkets. Notepads with Hannah Montana, barrettes, wallets, pens and pencil cases. I stock up monthly and either send them to school as gifts for Francoprime store (the store at daughter’s French immersion school. Kids are rewarded with tickets for speaking French and then they get to buy trinkets)
8. Craft kits. Wooden and seasonal sometimes ornaments too. My children love to paint, colour, mould and shape these things and fun for $1. Woohoo!
9. Decorations. Xmas and Halloween. For $1 it doesn’t matter if they last that long.
10. Umbrellas. Honestly all of our umbrellas break whether they cost $10 or $1, so why not pay $1 and then draw on it or paint it with fabric paint and have a blast.
11. Kid’s character hangers. Normal hangers don’t hold children’s items.
12. Mitts.
13. Bristol board for children’s projects (school and Brownie’s)
Oh and my smartest idea yet…lately I take my older daughter a couple of times a week and hand her a pile of change then tell her she can buy as much as it is worth. (typically less then $3 or $4. Naturally I help her figure the money calculations out as needed, but it’s the best way I’ve discovered of helping her understand money. This also prompts discussions about whether we should waste $1 on another whoopie cushion when we already have like three. You get the idea…
Anyways, this giveaway is just in time for Xmas. Rainbow Magic Fairies are wonderful little chapter books for girls (and some boys) aged 5 to 8 or 9 at most. There are many different parts to the series in which two girls Kirsty and Rachel help solve small mysteries with the help of fairies. We started with the weather series when Payton was five or so and now her sister likes to read them to. The book at right here is Rainbow Magic Pet Fairies, Harriet the Hamster fairy, by Daisy Meadows, a Scholastic book. I got it free when I bought two other books, so I am giving it away to one lucky reader..
To win, leave a comment on thriftymommastips about what your best dollar store find is. Leave your email, blog or twitter ID.
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I will draw this one on Random.org Dec. 1st.