Boredom Buster: Local Events

We are all so busy, sometimes we don’t have time to scout out what’s going on around us.   Like in our area right now there are tons of signs for the circus that is going on tonight, so its pretty obvious we are going to know about that one.  But there are a lot of places or events you could attend that are inexpensive or sometimes even free.  Examples of places we look for are:

• Museums
  
• Zoos
  
• Amusement Parks
  
• Gardens/Farms
  
• Aquariums
  
• Community Centers
  
• Library
  
• Fairs

To make sure we don’t miss out on times when these places offer lower or even free admissions.  This is how we find recent opportunities to do just that.
Doing a little legwork we:
-Local Newspaper/Nearest City Newspaper
-Word of mouth. Getting out there and just striking up conversations with people in the area.
Ways that we set up to conveniently come to us are:
-Signing up for online newsletters- this can be a wonderful way to stay up to date on discounted admission fees or possibly free days.  *Note:  I do this myself, but I devote an entire email address specifically to this, so I can just check it whenever I am planning my weekly events and it won’t overwhelm my regular email.
-Subscribing to websites RSS feeds, and using a wonderful feed reader like “Google Reader” or “Windows Live Essentials” to organize them conveniently.

1. “Google Reader” is an online only application that organizes everything so brilliantly, and it tracks back to the beginning of the feed.
   
2. “Windows Live Essentials” is a desktop application that you can download to your desktop completely free.  It does everything from organizing your Calendar events, checking several emails at once, organizing your contacts, has a feed reader and it even picks up your newsgroups all at once and in one convenient place.

-Social Networking sites.  An example is Facebook, you can find the businesses page and click on the link to like it, and you then receive all updates that they post.
*These are a few to get you started on having a less expensive summer filled with events with your kids.  Please leave any additional ideas that you would like to add in my comments. 

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