Cool Magazine Finds:

These are things I've found while perusing my favorite parenting magazines. Enjoy, and let me know if you use any of them!

• Check out the Boon's Oval Animal Bag at www.booninc.com. This looks just like a been bag, and it unzips so that you can store stuffed animals, clothes, or blankets/pillows inside. But why pay $60 for it when you can revamp your old bean bag chair. Simply take the stuffing out of it, and insert the stuffed animals or the blankets that are stuffed into some corner of the closet.
  
• Tabletop Rock Garden. Grab a shoebox top, fill it with sand half-way, and add a few special rocks. You can write a date or a name/location to each rock with a fine-point permanent marker if you'd like. Take a plastic fork and cut the very tips off to give it a rake-like look. Then you can make little designs in the sand with the fork, and it looks kind-of neat too!
• Next time you're at the beach, draw a hopscotch grid in the sand with a stick instead of using chalk or tiptoe along a straight or curvy line drawn in the sand.
• www.atlastquest.com This is about letterboxing. "Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime combining artistic ability with delightful "treasure-hunts" in beautiful, scenic places. Participants seek out hidden letterboxes by following clues, and then record their discovery in their personal journal with the help of a rubber stamp that's part of the letterbox. In addition, letterboxers have their own personal stamps which they use to stamp into the letterbox's logbook." This sounds like a lot of fun. Check out what is available in your area.
• Hide some "treasure" in the sandbox. Then tell your kids that some pirates put it there. I used pretend coins.
• www.famster.com This sounded like a cool place to start a family website/blog. They let you make avatars for each family member. BUT, it costs $10/month. :( www.ourstory.com is free, but it's more like an online scrapbook.
  
• www.bellasara.com. Have a little girl who LOVES horses like mine does? You can purchase trading cards on here, and then enter the codes from the cards onto the site and take care of your ponies virtually. The site limits play to 1 hour a day, which is kind of nice.
  
• Fireworks in a glass. Fill a tall clear glass with water. Fill a smaller glass with 3 tbsp vegetable oil. Add 1-2 drops of blue and red food coloring. Gently stir once or twice with a fork. Pour the small glass slowly into the larger water-filled glass. Wait a few seconds. Say "Ooooh, Ahhhh."
• www.flipclips.com. Upload a 15-second clip, and they'll turn it into a flip book...just like a cartoon video!