Drawn in by circulars advertising low prices for back-to-school shopping, I recently purchased back-to-school items for my two daughters. On my list were composition books for 40 cents and discounted glue sticks from Target. The items are among the supplies that my daughters will need when they return to elementary school this fall. For parents looking to prep for the upcoming school year, stores like Target have school district-suggested shopping lists on hand for their customers in the stores’ school supply sections. Parents of East Windsor elementary and middle-school students can download…

My closet is jammed packed. But it isn’t because I have plenty of wonderful things to wear. The reason why my closet is so crowded is because I hold onto nearly everything, thinking that I may one day need it, or with much of my clothes, that I will some day be able to wear those smaller sizes. Maybe I will be able to slim down into my size eights or my size sixes again, who knows. But for now, all those smaller clothes are jamming up my closet, making it much harder to find anything worth wearing. So, I have been cleaning out my closet, taking much of my older, seldom worn clothes to …

I’ve often written about my desire to clean out my basement to create a clean and fun play space for my kids. But as I sort through the stuff and try to figure out what to keep and what to donate, I’ve been realizing that letting go of the past can be hard to do. While my kids are only 8, in my eyes, they are growing up too quickly. Gone are their toddler days when they played with their plastic kitchen sets and dressed up for hours on end in their Disney princess clothes. Yet, those kitchen sets and princess dresses still take up space in our basement. I should probably donate those toys to …

This summer, many of us will be hitting the roads or the skies for a summer vacation. When on vacation, it’s hard to find a balance between having fun and not spending too much money.My family will do some local traveling this summer, and we are looking to save some cash. So, I’ve been looking for tips on how to spend less when vacationing with the family. This is some advice I’ve found: 1. Research before your go: Read up before your trip, and scour the Web for deals on flights, car rentals, restaurants, etc. To save money on eating out while you’re away, search for restaurants in the area …

About a month ago, I purchased summer sandals for my 8-year-old daughters. The sandals were reasonably priced and were from Target, where sandals tend to sell out early in the season. Normally, I let my kids pick out their own shoes. But, after the shoe selections one of my daughters has made throughout the past year (with most of the shoes sporting a fairly high heel or being impractical or very flashy and sparkly), I decided to clamp down a little bit on the shoe selections. So, when I saw the sandals at Target, I bought them with no input from my daughters. That was a mistake. One of my …

My daughters have had two-wheeled bikes for several years now, but are still using their training wheels. The main reason they haven’t learned to ride without training wheels yet is simply because they rarely ride their bikes. While they enjoy playing outside, they usually opt to play in our yard or decorate our driveway and sidewalks with chalk instead of riding their bikes, even though we live on a great cul-de-sac location. I recently learned that a friend of my girls who lives on our street has recently learned how to ride her bike without her training wheels. It turns out that her …

The other day, I traveled to the Michelle and Jennifer Tobias Adventure to Health center at the CentraState Medical Center in Freehold. My neighbor had found a coupon in the KidStuff coupon book for the museum, and said she thought it would be a fun learning experience for our kids. I was dubious, but I signed on for the daytrip anyway. Using the Kidstuff coupons, our trip to the museum wound up costing about $7 a person, which was quite affordable. (Admission is normally $8 for kids and adults, with admission for the second child in a party being $7, each additional child is $6 and kids …

It is surprising how much you can get done when the motivation is big, or you need to get something done. Just this week, the Patch Moms Council, of which I am a member, shared our insights on how we conquer clutter in the home. While many of the moms on the council hold the enviable position of owning what sounds like tidy, clutter-free homes, I confessed in the column that my house is a mess. My house has tons of clutter, and although I am constantly working to vanquish it, I can never seem to get a handle on it. On Wednesday, the day that the column published, I went out for dinner with my…

This summer, my kids will participate in the summer reading program at the local library. (Our local library is the Hightstown Branch of the Mercer County Library System, which holds a kickoff program for the reading program tonight.) The program is terrific at giving kids an incentive to read. With just the incentive of small trinkets that kids can pick out and an occasional free book, the library has kept my children reading over the past three summers. My daughters, both 8, love bringing in their reading journals so the librarian can check off how many books they’ve read. My daughters also…

I had some work to do on one of my kids’ first day home on summer vacation. So, I sent them to the backyard to play, and planned to watch them from the kitchen, where I worked on a laptop computer. Soon, one of my daughters came inside and asked if she could play with her new boomerang. “Sure,” I told her, adding that she should be careful not to throw the toy over the fence and into the schoolyard behind our house or get it stuck on the roof. Sure enough, not 5 minutes later, my daughter came into the house and said that the boomerang was stuck on the roof. Terrific. Luckily, the toy wasn’t …

Monday, I took the kids, who are home on summer break, out with me to a doctor visit. Since I’ve stuck with the same doctor over the years, my M.D. is a bit of a drive away in Pennington. I didn’t really have anything planned for the day, so I figured that the day–which began my daughters’ first full week of vacation–would be a boring one for them. The doctor visit was quite long for them. It took an hour for me to get in to see the doctor, have my appointment, etc. Since it was after noon by the time we got out, I decided to head to downtown Pennington for lunch. My kids have never been to …

Now that school is out, kids are home for the summer and temperatures are on the rise, spending lots of time in a hot kitchen is the last thing anybody wants to do. You could always fire up the grill, but for those of us who want a simpler and less work-intensive option, here are a few ideas for quick summer meals. Pasta salad: My kids love this dish. Just cook up some rotini pasta, add some shredded cheese, sliced cumber and tomato, soppressata or pre-cooked chicken (such as Perdue Short Cuts) and Italian dressing, and you have yourself a meal. Gazpacho: My mom used to make this chilled …

With Father’s Day this Sunday, many of us are looking for the perfect gift to give to our dads. Dads can be hard to get gifts for, in my opinion. While there are plenty of inexpensive items that can wow just about any mom (like a gift certificate to a local spa or nail salon, or perhaps a certificate for a full-house cleaning), treating one’s dad or husband on Father’s Day without breaking the bank can be tough. Sure, most dads would love a flat-screen TV, expensive electronics and pricey game-day tickets, but budgets can be tough these days.  As my daughters like to say to me, “We could give…

The other day, I purchased three rose plants to plant in my front yard’s garden bed. I have to admit that I bought them totally on a whim (because I loved the plants’ beautiful yellow blooms) and knew little about the plants or their care.  It turns out I should have done some research before buying, since the variety I purchased (Cl. Smiley Face) is a climbing rose (rose bushes may have been more appropriate) that can grow as high as 12 feet. (And I have them planted in front of other bushes that are approximately 4 feet high, so I would want them lower than that.) The good news is that the …

It seems like the day I took home my twin girls, now 8, was just yesterday. Time is flying by so quickly, and although I mean to chronicle our memories, my efforts fall short. There are the scrapbooks that I started when my daughters were 2 years old that haven’t been touched for months, and there are the diaries for recording milestones that I keep forgetting to use. I have found ways to keep up with the swift passage of time, however. I’ve found that to keep our memories, I have to make the process as simple as possible. These are some tricks I’ve learned along the way. 1. Make computer …

In about a week many local elementary students will be out of school for the summer. While most kids are no doubt ecstatic about that fact, I am sure there are at least some parents who are just a bit panicked. That’s because with school out of session, there are about 12 weeks of school-free time that has to be filled with activities.  Some parents put their kids in either half-day or full-day summer camp, but for parents who don’t, there’s a lot of time to fill. My children will have four weeks of half-day camp, but besides that, they will be at home. Because I am a part-time editor and …

They say fences make good neighbors, but often a thick green hedge will also do the trick. My house sits on a decent lot on a cul-de-sac with great neighbors, but the problem is that my home’s backyard is adjacent to an elementary schoolyard and is flanked by a chain link fence. Since the busy playground affords us little privacy, I am thinking of planting a row of shrubs or evergreen trees along the fence. After quite a bit of research and visiting nurseries, I’ve identified some bushes and trees that I think would grow quickly, screen out views of the school and playground and lend some …

I’ve often thought that if I wanted a different or side career, I should go into hosting kid birthday parties. That’s because those parties have become a big business these days. Gone are the days when you invited a few neighborhood kids over to your house, served a homemade cake and let the kids play a few games like musical chairs and pin the tail on the donkey. Now, when most parents hold a birthday party for their toddler or elementary-school-aged kid, they fork over hundreds of dollars to a Bounce U or another party place for about two hours or so of pizza, cake and fun for the kids. I …

Earlier this week, one of the moms in our Brownie Troop invited a craft specialist to our meeting to teach our girls how to make hand-crafted cards. The crafter brought everything the girls needed for making a card, including, paper, markers and decorative ribbon. It was up to each girl to decide who to make their card for and what holiday or sentiment to express. One of my daughters, a daddy’s girl, chose to make a Father’s Day card for my husband. My other daughter promptly started working on a card for me, and begged me not to look at it, which I tried my hardest not to do. When we got …

Are you looking for some new scenery to enjoy with your family? If so, why not take the 1.5-hour trip up north to the village of Piermont and the town of Nyack, which are both situated on the west bank of the Hudson River just north of the New Jersey-New York border. My family and I traveled there over the Memorial Day weekend and spent quite a memorable day there. First, we took an approximately 2-mile walk along the Piermont Pier, which juts out into the Hudson River. The pier has spectacular views of the Tappan Zee Bridge and is flanked by gorgeous (and pricey) townhomes. Along the way, we…