Author: marga (Page 20 of 158)

Today Mika and I had a great stay-at-home day together, about which I hope to blog later. But now I’m taking a break to write about two new (to us) products we used today that we enjoyed.
One is the Cranium Balloon Lagoon game, which I got at Thriftown for $2, seemingly with everything it originally came. The game seems to not be available anymore – it’s about $100 at Amazon marketplace – but you may also be able to find it in a thrift store.
Mika and I played it today and it was a lot of fun. It has 4 stations. In one you have to flick toads into a pond, in another fish letters to form words, in a third push levels to get the correct parts of a pictures, and in the last one throw pictured dice through a chute until you get the correct picture. Pretty simple things, but fun nonetheless. Of course, Mika won, I’m not sure it’d have been as fun for her otherwise 🙂 In any case, well worth $2.
Another item that we used today was the Conair Quick Wrap Styling Kit which I got on listia.com for the equivalent of $4. It also seems to be out of production, but I’m sure you can find it somewhere. It worked surprisingly well. You just put a spool of thread inside it, thread the hair and some thread through the whole in the machine, and then press a button and slowly push the machine down as it wraps the thread of hair. My only problem has been being able to make the wrapped threads be straight, I think the key is to be pulling down on the hair stiffly as you wrap it. In any case, Mika liked the results. I’m hoping that the machine will work with regular thread, as I have a lot of that.
Anyway, time to go back to pay attention to my girl 🙂

I picked up Clue Jr. The Case of the Missing Cake at a thriftstore a couple of weeks ago (for $1), and today the girls (who are on summer vacation) and I finally played it. It was a big success – they both liked it and it was neither too boring nor too challenging.
It’s been years since I’ve played Clue (though I also picked up a used set of this at Thriftown), but I imagine the rules for this one are much simpler. Kids do need to know their numbers, but the game is really best suited for kids 5 yo and older, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
One of the things I like about clue is that while some strategy helps, it’s also a game of luck, which means that the younger players are not at too big a disadvantage.
Anyway, if you can pick it up for cheap, make sure to do so.