'Fun' for Free

Ever since becoming a one salaried family, we've been in a permanent state of having to manage our money extremely well. The children and I have developed a number of things we do or could do if we were full of energy everyday, which are fun and dubiously educational.

This is my top ten list:

1. Playing in the garden, we made up a new game yesterday which is fantastic in the sun. Mummy lies on the sunlounger with a water squirter (for some reason I think they are ok, if we don't call them pistols), then the children run around very quickly and I try and 'catch' them with my water. At least forty five minutes of fun for me, no, all of us!

2. Making the Bed Fun - this is a national holiday in tattyhouse, with the children licenced to sort out all their tedddies, jump on duvets and pillows and make nests. Oh, and eventually the beds get made. n.b. if in a hurry, I just sneak off and do it on my own.

3. Watching a Film and Popping Corn. We love to make pop corn from scratch and none of us can resist taking the lid off the saucepan in the manic popping phase 'just to check'. Then settling down on the sofa/bean bags and watching a childrens favourite or a mummy favourite like Sound of Music or High School Musical.

4. Cutting out shapes from magazines, to decoupage or to just stick everywhere we can. We all love to cut.

5. Doing the gardening, weeding especially popular with children particularly the sticky weed. And we have plenty of sticky weeds to last as long as the interest is there. Ol quite enjoys pulling the bind weed up too, but that really is a never ending job. I just love to prune things.

6. Walking to the shops and buying sweeties and comics, this is possibly my favourite. Although as regular readers to tattyhouse will know, I'm almost definitely too old for sweeties and could not face admitting to breaking another tooth on a tooty frooty.

7. Having friends over to play, mummies get to drink a coffee in (sometimes) peace and when all works well children get more like them to play with. We often find that visiting children are just happy sorting through toys, as our our children at friends' houses. Hours of OCD amusement for them. Which leads me to:

8. Sorting things out, whether its all the little Lego men in a separate box from the blocks, to making sure all the t-shirts in the drawers fit, to sorting the linen cupboard its all absorbing. Lovely husband is, I know slightly bemused by my sorting, and the children's sorting fun, but we like it, and even better know others like us. My favourite sorter is a friend who has even managed to categorise the endless cars by size. I'm looking forward to sorting my buttons by colour one day.

9. It's got to be in here somewhere, watching TV and playing playstation, latter for no longer than an hour, former has on occasion lasted a whole pyjama morning. Which is ok, because we do stop and have discussions about getting dressed, the post, the programmes, and well, who sits where.

10. Lying in each others beds. I'm especially keen on this when a bit tired. Basically game is grown up gets in childrens bed, i.e. bunk beds and children have to entertain with books, toys. hopefully not dances and so on. Love it, a lie down and some nice cuddly toys.