Feel on Vacation with these Staycation Ideas
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Fun, simple, and great staycation ideas to spend with your family. No need to spend a lot of money traveling when you can have fun at home.
Feel on Vacation with these Staycation Ideas for Families
Summer is here and while that often means traveling out of state for a fun family vacation it is not always possible to find enough money for one in the budget.
That’s okay though, because there are lots of fun things that you can do without booking an out-of-town vacation. You can feel just like you are on an amazing vacation with these staycation ideas!
You can also read more about The Best No Spend Weekend Activities for Kids and Families.
Backyard Camp Out
Who says you have to leave the house to go camping? You can have an awesome staycation camping out right in your backyard. You can have a small campfire in your grill or fire pit where you can grill hotdogs or make s’mores.
Set up your tent and you are ready for a night of family fun under the stars.
If it happens to be too hot, or even too rainy to camp out in the backyard you can still have a campout at home. Just set your tent up in the living room or family room instead!
Fruit Picking
Are there farms with fruit being grown near your location? If so, you can spend an enjoyable day on your staycation picking fruit!
There are plenty of berry farms with strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and apples where you can go and pay a set amount to pick a bucket or bushel of fruit.
Once you have picked your fruit you can share it with friends and family, freeze it, bake with it, or make your favorite jams, jellies, or preserves.
A Spa Day
One of the highlights of any vacation is often having a day of pampering, but you don’t have to head over to the spa for that. Instead, you can have an amazing spa day right at home!
You can make homemade facials, and fruit-infused water, and even give each other manicures and pedicures.
Finally, put some relaxing music on. Home spa days are refreshing, relaxing, and a great way to spend an evening by yourself or with a few friends.
Visit a Local Landmark
Oftentimes we get so busy in our everyday lives that we forget about amazing things to see in our hometowns. If there is a local landmark in your city, make plans to take a day and go check it out. This might be an old fort, Indian mounds, a museum you have never been to, or a state park.
If you aren’t sure what you may have been missing, simply do an internet search on your hometown and pick something to visit you haven’t seen before.
Go to a Pool or Waterpark
If you don’t have a pool at home, consider heading to a local pool or water park for the day. For many families, a day spent at the pool, beach, or water park is one of the highlights of their vacation.
Even if you aren’t traveling this year, it doesn’t mean that you have to skip a day of fun in the water. If you don’t have a local community pool or water park, consider getting a room at a local hotel for a day.
Dinner Party
What’s a vacation without some amazing food? Just because you are staying home doesn’t mean that you can’t have some delicious treats.
You could decide as a family to have a themed dinner night such as Mexican or Thai, or you could have a spread of everyone’s favorite finger foods set out to enjoy while watching a movie together or playing games.
You could also let each member of the family pick out a new recipe to try. Whatever you decide your bellies will be full of some delicious vacation-worthy food!
Art Day
If your kids enjoy arts and crafts and being creative, then they might enjoy spending a day of your staycation making art.
You don’t have to spend a fortune on art supplies either. There are plenty to be found at your local dollar store or search Amazon for art kits.
Grab some paint, brushes, canvas, pipe cleaners, sequins, glitter, and whatever else strikes your fancy, and let your kids go to town.
Themed Movie Night
Whether indoors or out, a movie night can be fun! Especially if you allow the kids to stay up later than normal.
If heading outside for movie night, it would be a great idea to invest in a projector screen and projector to take family movie nights up a notch.
Local Food Tour
Our family loves to eat, and I bet yours does too. You don’t need to hop around for dinner options. You can choose something fun, like “let’s see who makes the best dumplings or best slice of pizza.” and set off to your favorite places.
Or you can hop from cuisine to cuisine; tackle the mission in a single day or stretch your tour out over several days.
No matter how you plan your food tour, your family is bound to discover some hidden gems—just be sure to have some research under your belt. It would also be fun to have a family rating system.
These are just a few ideas that you can use to make your staycation feel like an amazing vacation. You can spend a day doing whatever your family truly enjoys, whether it’s going for a hike, to a local baseball game, or seeing a show at a local theater.
What are some things your family enjoys doing on a staycation?
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These are some great ideas. And we have done some of these as well. They are fun.
My family tried to do a backyard campout. They didn’t last 10 minutes in the Florida heat. LOL It is a nice memory we have. They need to do it when its cooler.
These are nice ideas. We love having all our meals as a group. There’s something uniting about it, we have never gotten over all these years.
Wonderful ideas! We are lucky to have a water park near us (about a 45 minute drive). My grandson was there last week and he enjoyed it. I think a backyard camp out would be a nice activity to do.
We have camped in the backyard. We have also camped in the living room. We lived in the country when we camped in the yard. I woke up and both kids had gone in the house. I was sleeping in the tent alone, lolol.
HA HA HA!!! That was us too. Camping in the yard with no kids, but it started with kids. LOL
These are all such lovely ideas. I know my kids would enjoy a spa day. That can be fun. A themed movie night works too.
These are great ideas. The theme movie night is a favorite in our house! Marvel usually wins.
YES!!! Us too, we are huge Marvel fans.
We do a lot of staycations. I love the idea of doing a backyard campout. We are planning one for this summer!
These are such fun ideas! I love the idea of being able to “get away” without actually having to get away. It’s so much more fun and less stressful.