Do you love to share your ideas?

I do, and my husband knows it too. He loves to point out things in the newspaper that I might find interesting or appealing. A few weeks ago we were reading the Sunday paper, and he mentioned to me that I should "take a look at the blurb on the bottom of the Living Section." So of course I did, and there was blurb asking for ideas on ways to save money or cut costs in our everyday life. Here is the actual email list I submitted:

1. I drive the speed limit and use cruise control whenever possible to get better gas mileage. It’s also good to check your air pressure in your tires regularly…
2. I go to the grocery store only once every two weeks and avoid spontaneous shopping. Limit your trips makes for lower grocery bills.
3. I create meals based on what is advertised on sale or has a coupon.
4. We bought a programmable thermostat with a timer. We are able to better control the temp of the house based on when we are home.
5. Schedule errands for one morning a week by mapping out my travels so that I am not making extra trips into town.
6. Planning our vacations based on local events like Rose Festival, Family Reunions etc.
7. Instead of signing up for kids camps this year, we (two friends and I) decided to plan different camps for all our kids. Each mom has a week and a theme for events relating to the theme i.e. cooking, hiking and art camps.
8. Use public transit whenever possible. We live a block away from the local SAM bus system which also goes to MAX in Gresham…

Not that exciting right or out of the ordinary? I was really surprised to get a phone call from the reporter saying how she loved my suggestions and especially liked number seven for a feature article (not remembering at all what number seven was).

I would have never thought the idea to be that out of the ordinary. Some girlfriends (well really me, not them, they just come a long for the ride because I make them) and I didn't sign the kids up for summer camps this year. Being under 5, they really are too young for the fun camps, and we have to keep them busy doing something so I thought lets plan our own camps. We decided to each take a week (with a theme of course) and host our own camps.

We have cooking & food (my week), outdoors & hiking and  an art & crafts week packed full of fun.  Last week was the cooking week, and How fun it was. We actually spent the first day of our "cooking camp" at the strawberry patch picking berries... after a few hours of picking we sat down for lunch and someone came up to us and said... "you guys are from that camp right?" How funny is that?

Who would have thought that we could be famous? Sometimes it pays to read the paper. You never know what will come out of it! We have art week coming in a few weeks.... thankfully we gave ourselves a few weeks break between camps... I am still a little wiped out!