Not every fare deal warrants attention on a family travel oriented blog, but in this case, Delta has good summer availability from many US cities for $1200 to Australia.  While that is by no means cheap on an absolute level, it is an excellent fare from the US to Australia, especially so during summer vacation season.  I just wanted to give it a brief mention and point over to one of my favorite sites, The Flight Deal, who posted this well ahead of me.  Click through for the details and how to book.

A potential good deal for the weekend family travelers.  Starwood and MasterCard are running a promotion offering 20% off the nightly rate when booking two weekend nights. The usual fine print applies – not all hotels participate and the rate is prepaid/non-refundable.  Although it isn’t entirely clear from the title, the 20% off appears to apply to all nights in your reservation as long as two weekend nights are included in the stay.  This promotion is valid for stays booked between May 15 –December 31, 2014 and completed by March 31, 2015. Still, there are a wide range of participating Starwood hotels in the Sheraton, Westin and Le Meridien families.  I tested the new Westin Harborview here in Portland, Maine, and sure enough, most weekends are available – even now during [...]

Hat tip to Gary Leff for posting this first. An Ebay seller is offering a $30 upgrade to HHonors Gold status.  A tremendous value if it pans out, but in my opinion is likely too good to be true.  I am not personally aware of any mechanism to sell or gift HHonors status, and this does not appear to be coming from Hilton themselves. For those still interested, the additional risk beyond Hilton revoking your status or the seller not being able to deliver is that the completion itself relies on sharing your HHonors username and password/pin. HHonors Gold normally requires 20 stays, 40 nights or 75,000 earned base points in a calendar year. Benefits include – 25% bonus points on stays 5th night free on award stays Late check [...]

For a limited time, Amazon is offering a $15 gift card with the purchase of $50 worth of select Household Essentials.  The selection is not incredibly large, but it does include the types of paper products that kids tear through quickly. Have a look here and see if the deal makes sense for you. Please note that at this time, I am not an Amazon Affiliate due to my state of residency and am therefore not compensated for anything you purchase by clicking the above link.  I have provided the link without any embedded referral code.