Making memories on a budget is very easy to do. Choose any of ideas below and you'll have a fun-filled time without breaking bank!

Garden - Plant flowers, fruit trees, herbs, or vegetables. Your child will learn science, responsibility and have fun!

Snip-it - Give your child old toy catalogs or magazines and safe scissors. Watch them cut all day.

Diggin' It - Send your child outside with a bucket and small shovel. Shoveling snow, sand, dirt or rocks -- it's all good fun.

Sing - Turn up radio and sing! Teach your child music of 70s, 80s, or 90s.

Play Catch - Throw different items (balloons, tennis balls) to your child. Roll balls to young children.

Sidewalk Chalk - Lay on sidewalk and take turns outlining each other. Decorate your flat selves.

Cardboard Boxes - Make towers, build cities, design play houses, airplanes, trains, forts and more!

Bubbles - Blow Bubbles. Take turns chasing and popping them.

Masks - Create Masks from Paper bags, paper plates, foam, or anything on hand.

Cards - Introduce your child to all classic games -- UNO, Crazy 8, Go Fish, Old Maid, Memory Match.

Scavenger Hunt - Give your child a list of clues and send him out to find them. Clues can be simple (find a rock) or very advanced (find a piece of granite).

Throw Rocks - Go to a pond, creek, or lake and throw rocks. Try to skip them or aim for different targets.

Bath Time - Bring kitchen utensils into bath tub. Bubbles and water can become an imaginary gourmet dinner.

Comparison Shopping: Gone are days when there was no easy way to compare price of a product at different stores other than visiting stores. In this new era of cyber-shopping, there are numerous options to compare price of a product at different locations of globe. With very little effort, internet would find best and right price, at right store for you to save big bucks.

A few days back, I was shopping for a Mini DV camcorder in price range of $500 to $700. An ardent internet shopper, I researched on brands, their prices and decided to buy a JVC GRD200 Mini DV camcorder. It is (may be “it was”) my belief that Amazon.com delivers best products at lowest prices (It does sell best products, but not at cheapest prices – at least in this case). As always, I was poised to buy product from Amazon.

The comparison on price of this product (via www.shopping.com) revealed that product was sold as low as $299.00. With further research I understood that price was indeed 299 US dollars. Delaying no more, I bought camcorder from this seller instead of my first option – to save only $400.

As I look back, it still perplexes me how I saved $400 on a single buy. Does it not surprise you when you cut down 400 dollars on a single item? Perhaps most important thing I did was comparing prices for this product on www.shopping.com. It paid!

Cognizant Shopping: As a customer, your goal is to buy best product at cheapest price. Right?

You agree with me that it is not an intelligent idea to buy a product for 10 dollars when it is sold at 3 dollars less at near by store. Neither do you accord it a savvy-shopping, to buy a product for 50 dollars when its price can be reduced by 10 dollars via special store discount/coupon for product.

Many of us do not realize power of coupons. They hold tremendous potential for huge savings. Depending on how you use them, a coupon for 10 dollars for every 50 dollars would save 40 dollars over a period of month, assuming shopping once a week. Extrapolating, it is a 200 dollars savings over a 1000 dollar shopping-money. A typical Christmas shopping would amount to these numbers easily.

Although example seems to be ideal, it resonates ideas of retails stores like JC Penny or Sears, whose holiday-shopping-placards read “$10 off for every $50 shopping – JC Penny”, “$35 off for every $250 spent on electronics – Sears”. Get into habit of using coupons whenever possible to appreciate savings accumulating into your pockets.