Visit Plimoth Plantation this month for the Haunted Pirate Ship aboard the Mayflower II! Don’t worry, this haunted ship is family friendly!
Dates:
Saturday and Sunday, October 10 – 11, 5:30 – 8 pm
Friday and Saturday, October 16 & 17, 5:30 – 8 pm
Friday and Saturday, October 23 & 24, 5:30 – 8 pm
Friday, October 30, 5:30 – 8 pm
Prices:
Plimouth Plantation Members: $6, children ages 3-12: $4
Non-Members: $8, children ages 3-12: $6
Haunted Pirate Ship tickets are only available on the nights of the event. Plimouth Plantation does not currently offer advance Pirate Ship sales. For more info, call 508-746-1622, or visit the Plimouth Plantation website.
If you’re looking for a little fall adventure, try the giant corn maze at Sauchuk Farm in Plympton!
Their giant penny-themed maze is open on weekends from 10 am to 6 pm through November 1st (depending on weather conditions). You can take a ‘passport’ with you to help navigate your way through the maze. Find and answer the ‘Cornundrums’ (riddles) along the way and you can enter to win the grand prize! Also at the Farm, you can take a hayride to the pumpkin patch, ride a cow train through the corn, and hit targets with a corn cannon!
Admission: $8 for ages 13 & up, $6 for children ages 4 – 12. (Children 3 & under get in free). Click here to get a coupon!
In addition to the maze, the Sauchuk farm stand is open every day from 9 am to 6:30 pm.
Thanks to KW for the great tip on this!
Although the holidays are still a little ways away, it’s never too early to start thinking of gift ideas. If you’ve got a new Mom or Grandmother on your list, or just a friend who likes pretty pieces of jewelry, check out JAT Creations. Everything on this site is handmade to order by Judy, a local Mom, and the creative mastermind of JAT Creations. Her work is beautiful, unique, and available for a reasonable price!
A new addition to the site is her Stamped Jewelry , it’s beautiful and you can customize it in so many ways. Put the kid’s or grandkid’s names on it, add a date, or include an inspirational word like ‘peace‘, ‘love‘ or ‘be‘ . Birthstone drops are available to complete the look!
Another great option is the Mother’s Bracelet. These can be made to include children’s names or initials, plus birthstones, or with birthstones only (Swarovski Crystal birthstones). For multiple children or grandchildren, you can even choose to have a double or triple strand bracelet made. All options are so pretty, and make a great gift!
Judy also makes Awareness Jewelry, Children’s Jewelry (including some pretty cool Red Sox and Patriots necklaces for boys), and lots more that you’ll just have to visit her site to see!
My 5 year old son loves art projects, and is especially into crayons. Pretty much every afternoon you can find him parked at the kitchen table with a pile of white paper and his box of 96 Crayola crayons. He can go through a 100-sheet pad of drawing paper in two weeks. All of his pictures are important to him, so of course I try to display as many as possible… we’ve got them on the fridge, the basement door, sometimes even on the kitchen cabinets. In order to try and keep the house a little less cluttered looking, I went searching for some ideas to better display his ‘pieces’. I found a great solution online in these Work of Art Clips ($12.95 each from the Land of Nod). They come in four different styles (I went for the Stars, very cute!), and each strand includes 7 clips to hold up your child’s artwork. My son loves seeing his pictures displayed on the walls of our playroom, and will show them off to any visitor he can drag in there!
My plan was to wait until October 1st to break out the Halloween decorations, but somehow over the weekend I found myself dragging boxes up out of the basement and decorating anyway. So, at least in our house, the Halloween season has arrived!
The kids are now psyched up for the holiday, and want to do crafts. Usually I’m prepared with some sort of magnet kit or paintable item, but this time I’m a little behind the ball and resorted to handing out some coloring pages I found online. The boys were completely pleased with that, and had at it for over an hour! I thought I’d share with you all, so here are some links for Halloween coloring pages we enjoy in our house:
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Coloring-book.info is one of our favorite site for coloring pages, lots of popular themes here.
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Coloring.ws has some cute ones, sorted by type… bats, ghosts, jack-0-lanterns, spiders, trick-or-treaters, vampires, and witches.
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Hersheys.com has coloring pages to print, plus an online coloring book.
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Family Fun has lots of great Halloween printable activities, including coloring pages, mazes, ‘find the difference’ activities, connect the dots, and more!
Stay tuned for some spooky craft ideas in the next couple of weeks!
For those of you out there interested in getting tickets to the New Hampshire Polar Express, there are only a few more days left! Lottery entries must be postmarked no later than October 1, 2009!
If you’re not familiar with this event, it’s a hugely popular recreation of the book by Chris Van Allsburg, with Polar Express trains leaving from two locations, Lincoln, NH and North Conway, NH. It’s really well done and therefore in very high demand. Tickets are available through a lottery system only. Winners will be drawn on a given day in October (see website for exact date), and each winner will be called on that date only to confirm tickets and payment. Winners are only called one time, so make sure you’re home on that day! Otherwise they need to move on to the next name on the list.
See the Polar Express of New England website for more details on the event including ticket prices, performance dates and times, and the lottery system.
Quick Tip:
Visit the Children’s Museum in Boston on Friday nights from 5:00 to 9:00pm, and admission is only $1!
If Friday nights don’t work for you, don’t forget to check with your local library for available passes. Typically library passes will admit up to four people for only $2 each!
If you haven’t heard of Groupon yet, you may have been missing out on some serious deals!
What is a Groupon? A Groupon is a coupon that you buy for a product or service in the Boston area, which is only valid if a group of people sign up for it. This service is brought to us by Groupon.com , who each day offer something cool to do, see, eat or buy at a fantastic price. You sign up for a specific Groupon deal, and if enough other people sign up for the same deal, you get it! If the minimum number of people is not met, then the deal is cancelled, and you won’t be charged. I got a great deal this summer using Groupon for a Spa Day in Boston and have been hooked on it ever since!
Signup at the Groupon website and recieve emails on new groupons so you’ll never miss a deal again!
I love fall. Love the weather, love the colors, love taking the cozy fleeces and sweaters out of storage and taking long walks collecting acorns with the kids. Maybe this week isn’t typical fall weather (my kids wore shorts to school today and loved it!) but I’m still in my fall mindset and plan on taking the boys pumpkin picking this weekend. Our usual pumpkin patch destination is Nihtila Farm in Holbrook. It’s a great local family run farm that we’ve been going to for the past 3 years. They provide you with gloves, a plastic knife, and a wagon, and send you into the 3 acre pumpkin patch to choose and harvest your own perfect pumpkin right off the vine. My kids love it!
Pumpkins are available for picking at Nihtila Farm now through the end of October, and on the weekends they have Hay Rides from noon til 5:00pm.
Recently a friend turned me on to a great movie rating website: www.kidsinmind.com
Kids in Mind rates all kinds of movies, not just kids flicks, and gives each movie a rating of 1 to 10 in each of three categories: Sex & Nudity, Violence & Gore, and Profanity. They also give details on each occurance e of those categories in the movie. The examples are great and very specific, giving Moms and Dads a clear picture of whether the movie will be appropriate for their child’s age group or not.
Here’s one excerpt from the ALIENS IN THE ATTIC review under the Sex & Nudity category:
A young man talks about “hooking up” with a young woman. An alien watches a man and a woman kissing on TV and says, “Their lips are hugging.”
In an ideal world I’d be able to preview all my kids movies before allowing them to watch, but who has the time? This is a great resource for busy but concerned parents. Check out their website today!
Thanks L for the great tip, I’ll be using it often!
