Today I went with my boys to a birthday party at a bowling alley while my husband got some space to get in the zone on his fantasy baseball draft.
I enjoyed chatting with parents and playing arcade games with my kids--lots of fun, and no shoptalk about PTA with the folks that were there from our school.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the party next to us were serving juice pouches.
Juice pouches. When I see juice pouches, I see money. Regular mom one moment, fundraising fanatic the next.
You see, our school participates in Terracycle, a program that pays money for hard-to-recycle items like juice pouches and chip bags.
We get two cents per pouch--oh yeah, baby! You're looking at the 16 cents I scored at the bowling alley by grabbing pouches from someone else's party.
At least I restrained myself from digging through the garbage.
Last night our school had it's first Chuck E. Cheese night. If, by some chance, you're not familiar with Chuck E. Cheese, let me get you up to speed. Chuck E. Cheese is like a casino for kids. The food isn't very good, it's loud, and there are a lot of blinking lights and things to make kids and adults feel very overstimulated. Patrons purchase tokens that kids can use to play a huge variety of electronic games (that generate more noise and more blinking lights). Last night was a fundraiser: a lot of families from our school went to C-E-C, and C-E-C donated 15 percent of the proceeds to our PTA.
So, I expected to sit down this morning to write a groaning "I hate Chuck E. Cheese" post. But guess what? I didn't hate it at all.
In general, I love "restaurant nights" as school fundraisers. While they don't bring in a huge sum, they're not a lot of work. All you have to do is promote the event--hand out flyers, post it on Facebook, etc. Then you simply show up and eat dinner, with the added bonus of getting to visit with friends from school while you dine. At their best, it's like having a party without having to cook or clean.
Chuck E. Cheese turned out to be a blast. Yeah, the food was nothing to write home about, but it didn't matter. My kids were so excited to play that we all just gobbled down a few slices of pizza and hit the games. I didn't overeat, as is too often the case at restaurants.
Our local C-E-C has a wide of variety of games that require you to move your body, so in addition to not overeating, we were able to work off our dinner! The space was clean, the staff was friendly, and provides a good set of marketing tools, including a visit to the school from Chuck himself on the day of the event.
While Chuck E. Cheese's tag line is "where a kid can be a kid", there are plenty of games that are fun for adults. Move out of the way, kids--mommy's hitting the Skeetball!
In 2012, very often school isn't just the place where you drop off your kids for six hours--it is a community. A large and diverse cross-section of our community showed up last night. Classmates ran around with huge smiles on their faces while their parents took a moment to chat. I will happily endure loud music and blinking lights (but thankfully no cigarette smoke like a real casino!) to make our community even stronger.
I don't have a lot of time to post today, so I'm just going to share my latest little bit of earning for our school's PTA, which I did through Boxtops Marketplace. It makes me happy and this is my blog, so here goes.
We're a family of vitamin takers. I often buy my vitamins through Amazon, because they've got the best prices. But this time around I checked Drugstore.com, and found that they were offering the same exact price on my desired item. Free shipping too!
So, I stocked up and spent $50. Drugstore.com contributes 5 Eboxtops, or 50 cents, per 10 dollars spent. So on my 50 dollar purchase, $2.50 is going back to our school. Yay. Thanks, Drugstore.com! Here's a snapshot of my earnings page on the Boxtops Marketplace:
As you can see, my Drugstore.com EBoxtops are pending. It takes 60 days to go from "pending" to "confirmed", because that allows time for items to be returned. It doesn't really matter, because General Mills only cuts checks twice a year anyway. The important thing is that the money makes its way to the school eventually.
By the way, an enterprising PTA mom in Texas somewhere made a great video that explains the Boxtops Marketplace in detail. Here is is:
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