I am not sure how many of you have HP printers. For those of you that do, here's a tip. You can take your empty pint cartridges to Office Depot (up to 3 at a time) and you will get a $3.00 credit for each one, Hey, that's 9 bucks! Now, I will be the first to tell you, Office Depot is not the first place I'd recommend to buy daycare/school supplies...I think they're too high...but, with the cartridges, you can get stuff free or cheap and you're recycling at the same time. I have gotten paper, cardstock, pens, markers, stickers, etc. by doing this. I even used cartridges to buy most of my 2 daughter's school supplies FREE! I save them up through the year and then "cash in" as the need arises. You might also check with them on other brands that they recycle. Also, I think I heard that Office Max does this as well, check into it first.

thanks alot I knew you could turn in the cartridges and receive a pack of copy paper but I didn't know that they will give you three bucks instead.

I mentioned this in one of the other discussions and I REALLY think it's worth mentioning again...Let people know that you have a daycare and before they send anything that's in good condition to charity, to let you know, because you take donations. I just received a brand new thermal laminator worth about $185...absolutely free! A store was closing and they had gotten it for their office and never used it. It still had all of the shipping plastic wrap on it when I opened it! Now I know that it's luck to run across things like that, but you never know. If you are offered something that you can't use, you can either say, "no thanks" or take it and send it to charity yourself. (Don't let yourself be stuck with someone's junk.)

I copied this tip off of Daniellesplace.com:

Saving Money on Craft Supplies

1. Ask parents to bring in old play necklaces that their children are no longer using. You can use the beads from the necklaces for other craft projects.
2. Pull apart old silk flowers and use only the silk parts -- petals and leaves.
3. You can find all kinds of supplies at garage sales - pinecones, beads, yarn, paper, tissue paper, wrapping paper, old cards, etc.
4. Reuse stuffing from old stuffed animals.
5. The best time to buy crayons, tape, and markers is right after school starts.

I'd also like to add that you can take the stuffing out of stuffed animals and make puppets...then, see #4 above.