5 Tips to Help You Love Shopping for School Supplies

It’s that time of year when parents are realizing that summer is ending and back to school is right around the corner. I’m a little bit of an anomaly in that I love shopping for school supplies (I know, I’m a freak)! Cruising with my cart full of cranky kids down those colorful aisles and sipping my coffee fills me with a child-like glee. If you don’t get that same thrill, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

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Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

 

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Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

1. Set Ground Rules Before You Go

No doubt your kids are going to want that crazy expensive talking R2D2 replica backpack.  Can you blame them?  That thing is sweet!  Oh wait, but they also need that holographic set of folders that are going to fall apart in two months, the scented markers with funny faces, and the My Little Pony glitter erases that will be lost before school even starts… Suddenly you have a cart full of hundreds of dollars’ worth of supplies!

Prevent this by letting your children know before you even head to the store what the ground rules are.  Kids always do better with clear-cut rules and expectations and it will save you a headache at the store.  Some ideas to help you are:

 

Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

2. Order Technology Supplies Online

While I personally do not understand a grade school student needing a flash stick (apparently I’m old) it still appears on that set-in-stone list of school supplies.  Don’t buy these at a brick and mortar store.  You can get much better deals on things like flash sticks, headphones, etcetera at sites like Amazon.

Bonus tip:

  • For your own sanity, be sure to get a flash drive that is a keychain.  This will allow it to be clipped to their backpack or binder to help prevent it being lost.

 

Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

3. Don’t Buy Into the Hype: Wait to Buy

Other than those items you plan to order online, wait until right before or right after school has started to buy their supplies.  Store always overstock school supplies items and the prices drop significantly mid to late August.  This means significant savings for you (bonus savings if your child doesn’t start school until September).

 

Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

4. Prepare for Next Year Now

Once September gets here you will be able to score basics like crayons, folders, and pencils for literally pennies. Go ahead and stock up on these items now and you’ll save even more come next year’s shopping trip.

 

Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

5. Treat Yourself

Congratulations!  You survived this year’s back to school shopping trip!  Treat yourself to a coffee or some pretty new post-it notes for a job well done.  Having a prize at the end will help you to have more patience and be less stressed during your shopping trip.

 

Back to school season can be hectic. Be a little more Zen for this year’s shopping trip with these 5 tips to help you love shopping for school supplies.

These tips will help get you through the stressful back to school shopping season. If you take advantage of tip number 4 you will be able to avoid it altogether next year. Before school gets in full swing, make your life easier by getting organized. Don’t worry. We have tips to help you organize your life from A to Z!

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DIY Kids’ Car Activity Binders + Free Game Printables

If you’re like our family, you spend longer periods of time in the car over the summer.  Our vacation alone will total 7 hours in the car and long gone are the days when our oldest 2 would sleep for the bulk of the trip.  We needed something to help entertain them but we also didn’t want to spend a ton of money.  These DIY kids’ car activity binders are the perfect solution!

Keep kids entertained on long car rides with these activity binders.

Materials

Keep kids entertained on long car rides with these activity binders.Keep kids entertained on long car rides with these activity binders.Keep kids entertained on long car rides with these activity binders.

Step 1

Print out copies of all of these free game printables and prepare them for your binder with the 3-hole punch.

**If you want them to be reusable, you can laminate them.  Just be sure to include dry erase markers or crayons in their pouch.

Step 2

Do the same for the coloring sheets and insert all of them into the binder, along with your zipper pouch.

Keep kids entertained on long car rides with these activity binders.

Step 3

Add some crayons to the pouch.  With these easy DIY kids’ car activity binders you can enjoy your car rides with a little less stress!

**I also added some small toys like cars and paper dolls.

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Get more great craft ideas on our summer page!

Easy and Colorful DIY Luau Invitations

This year I am helping to organize our class reunion.  Anyone who has done this can attest to the amount of work it takes (not to mention time, money, and energy).  One of the easiest parts for us was coming up with a theme.  Since we scheduled it for late summer we knew we wanted a more casual and fun theme so we decided on a luau BBQ. While we had done electronic invitations already, some of our classmates expressed that they would like to receive paper invitations to have as keepsakes.  I love this kind of stuff so I offered to design and make them.  Thankfully, a couple of the other girls helped me to assemble them since we needed so many! These DIY luau invitations are so easy to make and festive that they will be perfect for your summer party!

Affiliate links may be used in this post. Ordering a product through these links may result in a commission. Read the full disclosure here.

 

Teal, Green, Yellow, and Pink Luau Invitations on Gray Background

 

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Luau Invitation Materials

DIY Luau Invitations Materials

**I have not included amounts in these because it will be dependent on the amount you need to make.  I can tell you that we needed 100 and I used roughly 7-8 leis, an entire pack of cardstock, and about 5 tape runners.

Step 1

Design and print out the information part of your invitations on regular printer paper, 2 to a page.

Step 2

Cut your cardstock in half, bisecting on the 11” side.  Also cut out your information sections.

Tip:

 

Close Up of Rounded Edges of Luau Paper

Step 3 (optional)

I chose to round the corners of both the information pieces and the cardstock pieces.  If you choose to do the same, you should do so before taping the pieces together.

 

Luau invitation paper attached to cardstock

Step 4

Tape the two pieces together for each invitation, centering the information on the cardstock.

 

Flowers from Hawaiian Lei

 

Step 5

Prepare your flowers by cutting apart your leis (I got 3pks at the dollar store).  Then slide the flowers off of the string.

Tip:

Note: These leis have come in so handy! I’ve used them on a ton of projects like this adorable girl’s purse!

 

back of flowers with brad attached

Multi-color flower with brad in the center

Step 6

Assemble your flowers by placing two flowers of different colors together and securing them with a brad.

Tip:

 

Double Sided square sticker on invitation

Flower attached to bottom corner of luau invitation

Step 7

For each invitation, adhere a flower on the bottom left of your information with a mounting square.

 

Pink Luau Invitation with flower and paper palm tree attached

Step 8

Lastly, cut out green palm trees using your Cricut then attach 1 palm tree on the right of each invitation with the tape runner.

 

Teal, Pink, and Green Luau Invitations on Gray Background

Teal and Green Luau Invitations on Gray Background

That’s it!  I am so happy with how these turned out and again, they are just so simple to make. We were able to assemble around 60 of these in a couple of hours. If you are just having a personal bbq, these diy luau invitations should come together in minutes. If you are looking for more DIY fun you can find awesome creative summer ideas here!

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Pink Luau Invitation with flower and paper palm tree attached with text overlay - DIY Luau Invitations