(Also see last year’s summer fun post for more ideas.)

We don’t go on many special summer outings (this year, with the youngest turning four, I am just starting to wonder if I might be able to handle taking all five of them somewhere fun on my own), so every year I like to buy a few fun things to make an at-home summer vacation more fun.

Last summer I bought the Wubbzy soundtrack (photo from Amazon.com) and we listened to it on our way to and from swimming lessons each day; it became the soundtrack of our summer.

For this summer, I bought the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack (photo from Amazon.com). I’d been watching it go up and down in the $8-10 range since before Christmas, and this week it went down to $7.73 with a free $1 MP3 download and I sprang. (I might get the Summer Belongs to You MP3 album, too.)
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Oh, good, school’s out. No more lunch-making, bus-catching, homework-nagging. Now we turn our attention to scrabbling for ways to alleviate boredom.

Orb Factory Sticky Mosaics (photos from Amazon.com). Beth recommended the sticky mosaics, and I got the jewels one for Elizabeth for her birthday. Not only does Elizabeth totally love it, _I_ totally love it. I don’t usually like to do projects with children, but we’re on our fourth mosaic and I’m still having to prevent myself from working on it after she goes to bed. I bought the dinosaur set for ME to do (I’ll use the resulting pictures to decorate the room of dinosaur-loving Henry), and I can’t wait for it to arrive.  I wish they made sets for grown-ups.

They’re not CHEAP, it’s true:  about $17 for a box that includes 4 or 5 mosaics.  But after hesitating over the first set, I wouldn’t hesitate again:  well worth it for the fun, the fine motor skills development, the finished pictures (the three we’ve done so far are all on Elizabeth’s wall), and the project I LIKE doing with a child. If they sold them individually instead, for $3-4 each, I’d probably put one in my cart every time I went to the store.

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I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s trying to cut back on superfluous spending lately—cramped budgets! Looming holidays! Insane daycare costs! Medical co-payments! Babysitters! Pants for my son who keeps getting taller but not wider so nothing ever fits, ever!—so I thought it would be fun, and possibly even useful, to share a few of the things we’ve bought lately that have been worth every penny and then some. Caveat: these have to be things we’ve bought for ourselves, not for our kids, okay?

I’ll go first:
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The majority of the workouts I do are either accompanied by the cheesy synth-pop exercise video soundtrack (Jillian Michaels, I’m scowling in your direction), or whatever’s blaring through the speakers at the gym. When I run, though, I’m addicted to listening to the loudest, most upbeat stuff I can find. I know, I know, safety rules dictate you leave the iPod at home when you go for a jog, but what can I say, music makes the difference for me between “running” and “collapsing in a heap on the cement”.

I recently huffed and gasped my way through a 5K, and these are the songs kept me going:

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Do you realize that Christmas Eve is one week from today?  I’m making a list of gifts that have been given to ME in the past year, gifts that were a success and that you might want to consider buying for someone on your list.

My brother and sister-in-law gave me several pairs of earrings from the Etsy shop Kneehighs-n-Pigtails, and I LOVE them.  They’re so classy and dressy if you’re looking classy and dressy, but they look chic and awesome with t-shirt and jeans, too.
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My 2-year-old has never been particularly interested in music, unless you count his current interest in telling me to turn the radio OFF, Mommy, it’s TOO LOUD. (Note: it is NOT too loud, kid, I save the eardrum-bleeding stuff for when you’re not around.)

I do have a number of playlists on my iPod dedicated to kids’ tunes, though, just in case he stops being such a wet blanket about music sometime soon. Some of my favorites:

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The silver lining in my fairly long work commute is the fact that I have a solid chunk of time when it’s just me and my iPod, and I can listen to whatever I want at whatever volume I want, without worrying about destroying/sullying my son’s ears—or more annoyingly, having him tell me “No SINGING wight now, Mommy!”.

Of course, this isn’t time spent in a zenlike spa environment with restful water fountains burbling in the background and ivory-robed masseuses descending upon me with hot stones and various pleasant-smelling unguents; rather, I’m typically crawling along in a sea of red lights with fifteen thousand different hair-raising merge scenarios to contend with. But whatever, music soothes the savage beast! Even if the beast is a cross-Seattle rush hour battlezone.

Here’s a sampling what I’ve been listening to lately:

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