Before you travel with your baby, here are five travel tips to make life a little easier for you and your baby!

1.       Have groceries delivered to your hotel room. Rather than taking your baby with you to a grocery store when you arrive on at your destination or try to make just a few snacks from the car trip last your entire vacation, have groceries for the entire family delivered to your room. You’ll save money and your sanity with this tip.

2.       See what amenities your hotel offers or what you can rent when you arrive. Rather than bringing everything from home, your hotel may have cribs or pack n plays your baby can sleep in. Even complimentary breakfast can help as you plan your vacation with your baby. If you don’t want to pack big items like strollers, you can often rent these items, even double strollers, and have the delivered to your hotel room.

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When you are planning a vacation, it’s always helpful to find ways to save a few bucks. After all, you can drop some serious cash on a vacation. So, before you head out the door on your next trip, check out a few of these apps that can help you save money now so you can spend a little extra having fun on your vacation.

Hopper- This handy app can save you big bucks when you are planning a flight. It’s super handy if you have a few weeks or months to plan the trip and if your dates are flexible. Even if you have specific dates in mind, still check out the app. Hopper works by predicting the future price of flights. So, the app will tell you the best times to purchase your tickets. This way you’ll never have to worry you didn’t get the best price on your flights. Hopper can actually help save you up to 40% on airline tickets.

GasBuddy– If you are driving to your vacation destination or you’ll be driving around while on your vacation, you need to download this app before you go. Since gas prices tend to rise during the summer months, this app can help you keep the extra costs of filling up your vehicle with gas down. The app will help you find the best price on fuel no matter where you are, and another great feature is that you can calculate how much money you’ll need to budget for fuel during your vacation

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While you are making your vacation plans, be sure to add a quick trip to the nearest dollar store to stock up on vacation supplies a must-do. Even if you aren’t a frequent shopper at these stores, there are so many items you will need for your family vacation and you can find them at those stores. You’ll be able to find a ton on inexpensive items that only cost a dollar and that means you can save some money before your trip. That way you’ll have a few extra bucks to spend on your vacation.

Extra USB Chargers– We never seem to have enough USB chargers around here and when they only cost a dollar, I don’t mind grabbing a few extras for everyone before we travel.

Kids Sunglasses-If you have little kids, you want to grab sunglasses for them; however, if your kids are like mine, those sunglasses won’t last too long. From getting lost somewhere in the car or trampled on by siblings, sunglasses have a short lifespan. But if you grab a few pairs for just a dollar, you won’t need to worry about lost or destroyed kid’s sunglasses and you can keep a few on hand to replace the last pair.

Puzzles, stickers, coloring books and workbooks– There’s no need to spend more than a dollar on these must-have travel items. You can fill up a book bag full of these fun-filled activities for your kids and not spend a lot of money. You can also grab a baking sheet from the dollar store and use it as a lapboard while your child works on the puzzles and workbooks in the car.

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As the spring season comes to and end and we gear up for summer, it’s time to take advantage of the beautiful weather. So, grab your kiddos and makes some plans to get outside to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. While there are plenty of activities that could cost you a small fortune, here’s a list of 10 family friendly plans that are not only fun but free!

1.       Blow bubbles! If you don’t have any bubble solution at home, you can make your own Try finding different items in your home to use instead of a bubble wand. Bubbles are always a crowd pleaser!

2.       Play hide and seek. Whether it’s in your own back yard or at the playground, hide and seek is a game that all kids love.

3.       Fly a kite. Take advantage of the breezy spring weather and take a kite for a test run

4.       Take a bike ride. Get the entire family moving on bikes and scooters in your own neighborhood or go find a trail or park for a change of scenery.

 

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If you have a road trip planned with your family, then you already know that you’ll need more than a few suitcases to make the trip a success. So, if you have the snacks packed and all of the electronics ready to go, here’s a few last minute tips that will make your road trip so much easier on everyone

· Instead of packing every piece of clothing, have a spare set of clothes, bathing suits, or pajamas packed in a plastic freezer bag. This way your entire family can quickly change depending on what is happening, and you won’t have to pull out all of the suitcases to find what you need.

· Make sure everyone in your family has headphones for their electronics. You can grab an inexpensive pair for everyone for under five dollars. This will save everyone’s sanity because no one will have to listen or compete with other family member’s videos or shows.

· If you are traveling late at night or early in the morning, keep kids who aren’t’ sleeping entertained with glow in the dark toys. You can stock up on these items at the dollar store and they will be a ton of fun on long car rides.

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We love our four-legged friends and when we plan a vacation, it’s always extra fun to take our dogs. After all, they are part of the family. But just putting your dogs in the car and throwing in a few treats is not going to cut it. So before you and your pooch hit the road, here’s a few travel hacks to make the trip a breeze.

•  Keep all of your dog’s treats, toys, food and water bowls and leashes in one place by packing everything your pup will need in a roll makeup bag. This way you can keep your pet’s belonging organized and close by during your trip.
• If your dog hasn’t ever been on a long car ride, take a few practice trips that are shorter. A short car trip may be all your dog can handle, so it’s better to be safe than sorry before you try a long road trip.
• Take all safety measures before your trip. Take your dog to the vet for a quick health checkup, print out all of their medical records or save the records on your smart phone, make sure your dog is micro chipped and that it is working, and take a quick picture of your dog so you have a recent photo.

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When you are traveling with your kids and you’re counting on their favorite apps to keep them entertained, it can get dicey if the fun-filled apps that they love need Wi-Fi to work and they don’t have access to Wi-Fi. So being in the car or out and about without Wi-Fi can quickly lead to unhappy kids and unhappy parents. So before you head out with your kids electronics in tow-download a few of these fun apps because they don’t need Wi-Fi and can be real sanity savers.

For your preschoolers, try Busy Shapes 2. Kids will love playing this fun and interactive game and parents will love that they can monitor how long their kids play the app as well as which levels they’ve completed. To play, kids will move objects and match shapes. As the challenge increases, kids will have multiple objects and holes of different shapes to play with.

For kids ages 4 and up, try Tales Untold. This app is a collection of original audio stories geared toward a preschoolers and early elementary school kid. The app has fun music and lots of catchy theme songs that your kids will love. Each song is around five to 15 minutes long and contain fiction and nonfiction stories that are designed for kids and adults to listen to together.

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Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for that new car smell to wear off. When you have kids, you are bound to end up with spills and messes that lead to a stinky car. If you have time to give the inside of your car a deep clean, those smells will be history. However, if you are a busy parent and one of those tree air fresheners just aren’t cutting it any longer, here’s five easy ways to get your car smelling better.

Good Old Baking Soda- If you spilled something in your car and a smell is lingering even after you have scrubbed and vacuumed, sprinkle a generous amount of baking soda on the previous spill. This works great on any carpet in the car. After a few hours, simply vacuum up the baking soda and the smell will be gone.

Charcoal and Coffee Grounds- This smell remedy is one that always sounds quite strange but really works well. Since charcoal and coffee grounds absorb smells, you can leave both in your car overnight to alleviate a stink that just won’t go away. For the coffee grounds, just put them in a bowl or leave them in a coffee filter. Just be careful if you are not a coffee lover because your car will have a strong coffee smell for a few days. If you love coffee-this is a great option.

DIY Air Freshener- This air freshener is easy to make, inexpensive, and works really well. Simply glue a few cotton balls or pom poms from your kid’s craft box to a clothespin. Then add about 5-10 drops of your favorite essential oils. Orange, lemon, and lavender are great options. Then to clip the clothespins to your air vents and turn on the air or heat. Soon your car will be filled with the essential oil smell and the bad smell will be gone.

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If you are planning to road trip it across the country or just across the state with your family, you know that there is a lot to plan for before you can leave. But before you head out on your family adventures, here’s a few hacks to tackle packing, unpacking, and even staying in tight quarters.

· Pack a few clothespins because after splashing in a pool or the ocean, you can attach the clothespins to the shower curtain to hang wet bathing suits and towels for a quick and space saving dry. You can also use clothespins as toothbrush holders so your toothbrushes aren’t sitting on the bathroom counter.

· Make the most of your closet space by creating your own hanger extenders. Use the top of a soda can and thread a hanger hook through it. Now there’s need to live out of a suitcase with this hack.

· An over-the-door shoe organizer is simple to pack and is perfect to hang in the bathroom. Rather than let everyone’s lotions, soaps, makeup, hair products, and styling tools take up all the counter space, pop everything into the pockets to keep the bathroom organized.

· Use a hanging sweater organizer as a cubby in a hotel room. It’s perfect as a catch-all for shoes, souvenirs or electronics. For early mornings, save time by designating each pocket for your kids’ outfits so everyone can get ready and out the door in a flash.

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