More About Us
While our primary goal is to be a useful resource for family-friendly (mostly) free things to do in the Dallas, Fort Worth Metroplex, we are motivated by our potential to contribute to the growth of DFW’s local culture and economy. By being a community resource that raises awareness about our area’s home-grown organizations and entrepreneurial creatives, we hope to inspire you to frequent and support our locally owned businesses, artists and entertainers and to help your kids understand why this is important.
The families behind DFW Free Fun
We are sisters, born in Dallas, raised in Red Oak and we have both lived in and all around Dallas over the years. We consider ourselves lucky to have been at the right age/stage at the right time to experience Dallas’ vibrant electronic music scene in the early 90’s as well as the great live music and art scenes that were happening in Deep Ellum and Denton in those days and beyond. Those experiences have informed and shaped our lives moving forward — with gratitude we approach this project in honor of the local creativity of North Texas, that it may be fostered and that our children’s lives may be enriched by it as well.
Since then, we’ve both done the college, career, family, kid thing and we both happen to have little ones who are around the same age right now. Jennifer still makes her home in the DFW area and Tammy now lives in Austin but returns home frequently for family visits. It was during one of these visits that this project was born.
Jennifer is very much an on the go, in the know kind of gal and if you plan a visit she’ll greet you with a mile-long itinerary of things to do. Meanwhile, down in Austin, Tammy’s been using freefuninAustin.com to plan playdates and find things to do with her little. With Jennifer’s knack for fun-finding and Tammy’s web background, it was pretty obvious to suggest that we collaborate to create our own version of a super-helpful website for DFW area families. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it!
Jennifer Mabra-Llarena
Jennifer holds a Master of Science in Deaf Education from Texas Women’s University in Denton and has taught in Dallas and Midlothian public schools for more than a decade. She finds herself in the unique position of being a mother to both a teenage daughter and a toddler son in a multi-racial, bilingual family. Music-loving, athletic and adventurous, Jennifer loves creating memorable experiences while exploring and sharing all that the DFW Metroplex has to offer.
Tammy Mabra
Tammy is an eclectic entrepreneur with a professional background in graphic design, content production and promotion for small business. She is an older mother to an only-child preschooler, who simultaneously ages and keeps her young. One of her passions is cultural creativity, exploring how to consciously and actively participate in and contribute to culture in ways that are enlivening and supportive of the greater good. She hopes that this effort may be a means to that end.
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