One of my most recent "spend less and save more" lessons came about last friday. we had planned for over a month on going geocaching with friends of ours. however when the day came, the weather forcast was 94 and humid! not a good day to go geocaching. so i racked my brain to come up with an idea that the kids would have fun AND was cheap-free. well i came up with an activity that was free and indoors but we did spend $ on lunch. i kept thinking, too bad there isn't a bunch of geocaches in the mall, however the muggle factor is too high, however again, that doesn't mean we couldn't have a good old fashioned scavenger hunt there (get how my mind works, well a little, but anyway). so i pulled up a list online of all the stores currently in the mall and made a list of things i thought would be in certain stores. the funny thing was they found several things in places i never would have expected them too! the following is some pics of the day. the kids had a blast, it was alot of walking which wore them out and we quit when they were too tired to keep going cuz there was no set time frame. i highly suggest if you follow in our steps, also making a long list, that way they won't run out of things to look for. but if by chance they do, you can always add to the list with things you see while they are searching. we also took a picture of each find to make a cute scrapbook later. we started by eating lunch at the food court so that bellies were full and kids were happy. 
A store with the word "ice" in it, close enough.....
a shoe with a face on it, they each found one with the help of the sales person! :-)
i must say, the sales people in the mall were all great and some even excited to help them out, here they were looking for a watch that glowed in the dark, once found, the lady took it out and let them hold it for a picture.
a music cd....again frankie posing his disgust of the particular cd.....
