With this tight economy people are looking for things to do while spending less money. Here are some awesome ideas for ways to have fun on the cheap so you don’t all bummed like the dude on the right.
1. Go Geocaching, a great way to explore your area and new areas.
2. Bring the coffee shop experience home! Brew some fancy coffee drinks, like chocolaty black forest coffee or sweet, spicy Mexican coffee. If you really want to get into the coffee shop mood, read some poetry to each other or have an open-mic night.
3. Visit a museum. Most museums have a day or two out of the week that’s free.
4. Have a board game night. Tell everyone to bring over their favorite games, and draw out of a hat to decide what you play.
5. Watch episodes your favorite TV shows from when you were a kid. Toonjet and Hulu are great sites to check out.
6. Bring some old pairs jeans or clothes you never wear and recycle them into something new, like a book cover or a practical tote bag.
7. People watch! Find an area with a large amount of traffic and check everyone out, sunglasses could be useful.
8. Play some retro Nintendo games for free online. Check out http://videogameninja.com/2012/07/18/play-nintendo-games-for-free/Â
9. Go to the park and play on the swings and jungle gym. (Better when all the kids have left)
10. Have a snowman-building contest, a sandcastle-building contest depending on whichever is closer.
11. Cook something random and crazy out of ingredients you find in your kitchen.
12. Go to the mall, break into teams and see which team can score the most things for free (without stealing of course). Award one point for each unique item, like perfume samples and shopping bags.
13. Play You Don’t Know Jack, an awesome old school trivia game available for free. (http://www.mtv.com/games/arcade/game/play.jhtml?arcadeGameId=10344415)
14. Invite some friends over to play video games. If you’re sick of the games you already have, put out a request on Facebook or twitter to trade games with a friend for a couple of nights.
15. Borrow some movies or CD’s from the library.
16. Go on a hike and stop somewhere pretty to write poetry, using your surroundings as inspiration. When you’re done with your work, read it and critique each other’s work.
17. Play a game of basketball or horse.
18. Host a poker night, using M&M’s as your poker chips.
19. Check your city guide to see what free festivals, shows and museum exhibits are in your area this month. Try something new. For me it would be http://losangeles.citysearch.com/
20. Play Telephone Pictionary with your friends: Everyone has a pad of paper and writes a creative statement on it (like “He-Man meets Harry Potter” or “a Led Zepplin has lunch with Ghandi”) and then passes their pad to the next person. That person read’s the sentence, turns the page and draws a picture of what they read. The pad of paper is then passed to the next person in line, and with only seeing the picture that was just drawn; they guess what it is and write down the sentence. Play continues like this until it goes all the way around. Read the guesses and show the pictures, hilarity ensues.
Have any other ideas? Drop me a comment! =)