Summer's here, and it's hot, hot, hot! Let's talk about ways to stay cool--and how to save money at the same time!

Brew a batch of cold ones! Save 10% off your order of Beer Equipment Kits at Midwest Brewing Company with coupon code SpringBrew-x1! 

Keep your pool clean and spend less money! Get $10 off your $50 order at In the Swim with coupon code 11005.

Brazilian-styled swimsuits are a fashion must--and Bella Beachwear is offering up to 63% off the regular price on all sale items--no code required!

Cool off with some delicious frozen treats from ecreamery.com! You'll save 10% with coupon code sweet212.

There are exactly 6 hours left in Eleven's school year. He's emptied out most of the contents of his desk, bringing home two backpack loads of notebooks and workbooks that look like a very large animal chewed on them. His teachers have posted summer reading lists and even supply lists for next year, which means I'll have just under three months to find the best deals on all those notebooks, pencils and highlighters before school starts again.

Phineas and Ferb stretch the truth a bit when they sing, "There's a hundred and four days of summer vacation..."

There are actually only 80. I counted.

Looking for some things to do to keep the kids busy this summer?

Get FREE shipping on your order of $75 or more at Nike.com--just in time for summer sports camps.

Use coupon code LL2 to save 50% at a Hampton Inn, where there's free hot breakfast every day! This coupon is good through July 24, so plan your vacation early.

Coupon code COKE saves you $4 on each ticket to Six Flags. Hurry--this one expires June 21.

Save $25 on single-day tickets to Kings Dominion amusement park in Virginia through June 18. Use coupon code WAKEMED.

Earn Super Cash at Old Navy:  get $10 when you spend $25, $20 when you spend $50 and $30 when you spend $75! This offer ends June 16, and Super Cash may be redeemed from June 20 to 26. This is a great time to stock up on shorts, tees and swimwear!

It's like this every Monday. Everyone leaves for work or school, and I'm left here to pick up the pieces--or, more accurately, the mess that happens when weekends happen.

As I sorted the giant piles of laundry that had accumulated since Friday, I turned on the TV, hoping to catch up on the news. I spent the next ten minutes looking for the remote so I could turn off the Weather Channel and turn on a local morning-news program. I got my morning calisthenics out of the way as I stretched to peek at the top of my husband's bureau (I'm vertically challenged) and lay down on the floor to peer under the bed. When I mentioned to the one kid who hadn't yet left for the day that I was looking for the remote, he confessed to having taken it downstairs because, over the weekend, he couldn't find the downstairs remote.

He did not, however, return upstairs with the remote in hand.

Thanks for that.

(In other news, guess who's on dish duty tonight? I'll give you a hint:  it isn't me.)

I found the downstairs remote right where my older son said it wasn't:  stuffed between the couch cushions.

All the remotes have now been returned to their proper places, because that's what I spend half of Monday doing. But my job is not done yet. I'm still looking for one of the cordless phones. It's been missing so long that it no longer rings when you call it, so I have no hope of using echolocation to find it. Meanwhile, I'm being hyperprotective of the other cordless phone. We can't have both of them missing at the same time.

Although it would make for a much quieter day around here, all is not right with my world if all the phones are not in their proper chargers.

Use coupon code Batteries to save 10% on your order from BatteriesDirect.com. You'll find replacement batteries for your cordless phones, remote controls, and anything else battery-operated! And there's a Cordless-Phone Battery Finder to make matching your old phone with a new battery super easy.

Tomorrow my friends, who host a local TV program highlighting singer/songwriters, are presenting an outdoor concert with 7 bands from their show.

Summer is a great time for community concerts! Are you and your family planning to attend outdoor concerts this summer? Make sure you're set up with plenty of creature comforts so you can enjoy the show, whatever the weather!

Get 5% off your purchase at The Living Quarters, where you'll find plenty of beach chairs to keep in your car for all your favorite outdoor events! Just use coupon code SUMMERSALE.

Bringing some food and drinks to the concert? Save 5% on your purchase of a cooler at KeepYourCooler.com with coupon code take5.

Get great footage of the musicians with an HD camera from Pointofviewcameras! You'll save 10% on your order with coupon code CRANKWORXVIP09.

This bookworm never did see the point of school-required summer reading, since I'd happily spend my whole summer with my nose in a book if left to my own devices.

The schools, I guess, want to make sure that everybody reads something over the summer.

Whether you're reading for school, work or pleasure this summer, there are lots of ways to save on the purchase of your books. Tjoos has a huge Book Coupons section--you're bound to find a deal on any book you'd like to read!

Prefer to listen to your books rather than read them? We've got a coupon for a FREE audiobook from Audible.com.

If vintage books and classics are your favorites, Abebooks lets you search for booksellers that offer FREE shipping.

Use coupon code WinnerPro-10 to save 10% on a $65 purchase at Bookcloseouts.com.

Taking a summer course? Save up to 94% on textbooks at BookRenter.com. This offer is good through July 10.

The only thing better than reading a book is saving money on the price of that book! Here's hoping that I see my kids doing a lot more of this over the summer:

Bear-mania is now over in my part of town, since yesterday the state Division of Fish & Wildlife caught up with the bear in a tree only four blocks from my home. After two doses from the tranquilizer dartgun, the bear snoozed all the way to his new digs in a state forest 25 miles east of here.

He's a cutie! I have to say, we will miss him around here--though I am glad to be able to fill my bird feeders again.

Since around here it's All Bears, All The Time (our local school district's mascot is even a bear) I decided to test out the powerful search engine here at Tjoos. You can type any word into the search box and get a TON of results. Today, I typed in "bear." Here are just a few of the cool coupons I found:

Use coupon code save10 to get 10% off any order at FreeBears.com--including sale items!

Coupon code survey20 will save you 20% off your purchase at Fanzz Sports Apparel--even if you don't choose a Bears-themed item.

Get your cabin ready for summer vacation with items from The Cabin Place! Orders over $89 ship free with coupon code PMR79.

Photo credit:  Burlington County Times

Most of my family lives in northwestern New Jersey. People there know about bears. They know that you don't put your garbage out the night before, you don't leave your steak unattended on the grill, and you don't fill your bird feeder when the bears are around. Their children learn that if a bear wanders onto the school playground, you should toss your (preferably full) lunchbox in the bear's general direction and run toward the building.

And then you have the folks in my neck of the woods suburbs, here in northwestern Burlington County, South Jersey. We're mesmerized by ONE black bear who's apparently taking a tour of some of the more well-heeled areas neighboring my very own zip code. My local newspaper reports that one woman pulled over to the side of a busy street with her kids in the car when they saw the bear on Friday. She said, "The kids were in the back seat excited and laughing, all buckled in. I don’t think they quite comprehended that we don’t normally see this in this area. They thought they were at Great Adventure or something.” Believe me, lady--this is not the Six Flags Safari, and you and the kids would all be a lot safer if you just kept driving away from the bear.

The bear even has a Twitter account. I haven't followed him. 

Today he was spotted swimming in a local lake. Now he's being called a "ninja bear" because he somehow has managed to elude the grasp of law enforcement again--even though plenty of people saw him doing the backstroke in a lake that borders on a state highway.

It's a bear, not a chipmunk, and this is a well-populated area. Keep the trash inside, keep an eye on the kids, and don't feed the bears.

If you're reading this from northwestern New Jersey or any other place where bears are commonplace, feel free to laugh at what's going on here in Burlington County. I'm pretty sure you know how to secure your garbage cans.

If you share your neighborhood with deer, not bears, you're probably looking for ways to keep them out of your garden. DeerBusters has a special offer through August 6:  FREE shipping on orders over $99!

image credit:  Burlington County Times

This weekend my daughter decided that it would be a Good Idea to swap out an armoire and bookcase in her bedroom with an antique dresser we had in the basement. I told her that it would be OK as long as she didn't leave all the contents of the basement dresser (spare sheets and out-of-season clothing) all over the place. Everything had to be put away neatly.

She spent the afternoon and evening working on moving the furniture and organizing her room. When I went down to the basement to do some laundry, she told me to check out all the "new storage space" she had created for me.

Lots of storage space--mostly unusable. That armoire was completely empty--and completely inaccessible.

I fixed that problem and am definitely benefiting from the additional space. My sewing machine and all its accessories fit perfectly in the top section. I'll probably rearrange the rest of the storage at some point, but I appreciate that my daughter didn't just dump everything all over the basement floor.

It's easy to get a new look for any room in your house--on a tight budget--at Pier 1 Imports! Right now you can save $10 on orders of $50 or more at Pier 1 Imports with coupon code 2223.

As the school year wraps up, parents everywhere are flocking to the coffee-mug selection at the stores or seeking out anything--anything at all--with an apple motif. They're looking for a great end-of-year gift for their child's teacher.

I'm a parent, as well as a former teacher and the daughter (and sister) of teachers. I can tell you a few things teachers generally don't want as an end-of-the-year present:

• homemade foods (unless they are very familiar with the source). Because you just don't know.
• anything apple
• anything chalkboard
• coffee mugs
• perfume or body products

Coffee mugs are so 20th-century, and every teacher has a cabinet full of them. Here's an unbreakable, versatile alternative:  the Tervis Tumbler! Made in the USA, these tumblers come in a huge variety of designs and can be used for hot OR cold drinks. The Kid had a great time choosing designs for his teachers' gifts when we purchased these tumblers last year. EXTRA CREDIT:  fill the tumblers with iced-tea bags or cool mints. Use coupon code HELLO to save 10% on your Tervis order through June 3.

One last idea:  you can't go wrong with a Gift Card. It doesn't have to be a huge amount to be appreciated! Teachers love gift cards to bookstores, office-supply stores, and their favorite restaurants or coffee shops. Shop at Giftcard.com for a wide selection of gift cards for your favorite teachers!

The Kid is a huge fan of soccer. He loves to watch the game as well as play it. So when we learned that his soccer coach was organizing a skill-building clinic this spring, we didn't hesitate to register the Kid.

For me, though, soccer would be a much more pleasant experience if it had better parking. Our town's soccer fields are notorious for being horrible places to park. The location of this clinic is not the winner of the Worse Soccer-Field Parking Lot Ever (that prize goes to the one that has a single entrance with a long road that dead-ends at the end of the 4-pitch field. You can park on one side of the road, but there's an unfenced creek on the other side.) The field we're using this spring, I'd say, is the runner-up. There is NO parking lot; you must parallel park on the street, but only one side of the street is available for parking. When there are 50 kids per clinic session, and sessions are consecutive, parking is a nightmare.

I've developed a strategy to deal with the problem:  I drop the Kid off, then park somewhere else in the neighborhood until the group that's finishing up has gone. Then I go back around the block and get a decent parking space. And I parallel-park the minivan.

I can do this, because before I bought the van I took it to a one-way street in a nearby small town, where parallel parking is a way of life. I made sure I could park that van on that street. I wasn't going to buy the van if I couldn't do that.

Last weekend, I'd just snagged a good parking space and settled the van in when the car in front of my pulled away. I was about to drive up into that space--where I'd have a better view of the Kid as he played--when another car came along, apparently relying on the same strategy I do.

It was the dad of one of the players on the Kid's team. He has a nice new muscle car. All the fifth-grade boys drool over it. Truth be told, so do I.

He tried three times to park that muscle car in front of my minivan before he finally managed it. Embarrassed, he got out of the car and came over to my van to say hello--he knew I'd seen him. "I've never had to parallel-park this before," he told me. "Figures that the first time I try, I'd have to do it in front of someone I know."

Maybe I should let him know about my test-drive strategy before he buys his next new car.

Need a place to sit while you watch your kids play spring sports? Visit Everywhere Chair, where you'll save 5% on any order over $10 with coupon code off5now.