SUMMER BUCKET LIST // 2012 RECAP

Summer is almost here! Things are winding down in the classroom, the weather is warmer and it’s single-digit work days before school is out for summer. I am super excited to spend summer with the boys and have been thinking of all the things we want to do. Then I remembered The Happy Family Movement Summer Bucket List Challenge. Truth time: I was a happy family flop last year. I signed up for the challenge and didn’t even make the list.

This year is different, my friends. Last Friday during lunch the boys and I brainstormed some ideas for our list. With a 4 and a 2.5 year old, this looked more like them giving me a few ideas and me coming up with the rest BUT they do have some ownership in it and were excited about the other ideas I came up with. We read it over with Brandon when he got home from work and he had nothing to add. I like to think this is because I’m such an awesome wife that I included everything he would have wanted—I mean I even had Elko Speedway on the list.  There are a few things we’ve done before and want to make sure to do again, but mostly its new stuff. We’ve lived in the Minneapolis area for 6 years and are reminded often of all the quintessential Minneapolis activities/attractions that we have yet to see and do. I kept that in mind while making our list and we ended up with the 60 you see below. Most of these we’ll do as a family but I’m sure there will be some that just me and the boys do as I’m off all summer and Brandon is stuck in his stuffy office.  We are giving ourselves a little wiggle room to complete our list because there are a few things (State Fair and Renaissance Festival for example) that back up dangerously close to the end of August.

I took our brainstorming/scribbles and whipped up that cute little list but decided that though that was great for me, I wanted the boys to have more of a visual. Cue my Spotify “design” playlist, some chevron, and a summer color palette and you have our bucket list cards. Here’s a before shot of our picture wall and then the after with our bucket list cards strung across the kitchen/dining room wall. The plan is to replace the cards with a picture from the bucket list adventure. If we manage to remember to keep all the cards, we’ll put the cards and photos in a photo album at the end of our summer and of course, the photos will all make our annual family scrapbook. This is a good thing because I have seriously been lacking on taking photos of my own family these first six months of 2012.