How I spent my Summer Vacation

Or rather, how I did with my summer bucket list. I’ll have to put up a fall list sometime soon. 

·  Go peach/apple/raspberry/blackberry picking

Never made it! Hoping to pick some apples this fall, but we’ll see.

·  Take an impromptu trip to the beach

Jay and I had a day at the beach in August that was more or less last minute.

·  Visit a farmers market

I picked up my book club noms last Friday at the Amish Farmers Market in Easton, so yeah, I can cross that one off.

·  Go crabbing

Never did go crabbing. If there was a free weekend, it was spent at home cleaning or vegging out.

·  Learn how to SCUBA dive

I learned! And this coming weekend we will be doing our checkout dives.

·  Send Aunt Nancy & Uncle Darryl a Thank You basket

I did this… they loved it!

·  Send Sally & Chris (our NZ people) a Thank You basket

We sent it, but I haven’t heard from them. I should probably send them an email.

·  Find frames for koala and lorikeet photos – then hang them

We have these framed and on display, but haven’t hung them yet. I would still call this a success.

·  Clean up front garden and plant perennials

The front garden has been cleaned up, but I never got around to planting. Hopefully I can do that in early spring.

·  Re-upholster dining room chairs

We still haven’t done this. At this point I think we’re going to need new padding for the chairs too.

·  Have a picnic at Martinak

Never got around to doing this.

·  Make marshmallows from scratch (stole this from TTG – been wanting to do this for awhile)

This was a fun project! If I didn’t have such a busy week planned, I would make another batch for next weekend.

·  Have rooster for dinner

We haven’t eaten our roos yet, but Jay and MacGuyver dealt with the messy part on Friday while I was at Book Club. Laura and I do Book Club, the boys do Fight Club. It was pretty traumatic for poor Jay. And me. And I wasn’t even there. Also, my darling husband killed one of the wrong roosters. So that was sad. We had too many and something needed to be done. Our hens were starting to get pretty banged up from having too many roos. There were missing and broken feathers, raw skin and even some wounds. 

We will probably take care of the last rooster at some point this winter and take an Easter Egger or Marans roo that someone is getting rid of.

·  Do the adult ropes challenge course at Tuckahoe

Did this!

·  Go kayaking

Did this before the ropes course.

·  Climb the rock wall at the Y

Never got a chance to do this.

·  Swim 1000 yards

I came so close to completing this. I made it to 900 yards. One time I was at 800 yards when I ran out of time and would have been late to an appointment. The other time, I was unnerved by an overzealous lifeguard. I was the only person in the pool and the guy looked like he was going to jump in and save me at any moment. It was disconcerting and it made me nervous.

·  Host a dinner party

I had my girlfriend Tiffany over for dinner last Thursday… so yeah, it was a dinner party. Sure.

·  Come up with a date, menu & budget for yearly fall party

We’ve settled on a date. Except that it’s the same weekend as Punkin Chunkin. We’ll see, I guess. This year we’re going to scale it back a bit, including picking an ending time (hopefully people will be a little more responsible with an end time). Last year things got a little out of hand when one jackass brought fireworks and then another one decided that it would be fun to throw the fireworks into the fire. Ugh. We are also scaling back on the food this year… there is always too much and having such a large variety cuts into the budget.

·  Make a plan for the backyard

We have a tentative plan, but every time we go to Home Depot or Lowes, we’re hoping to run into Ahmed from Yard Crashers. Mainly, the plans include a deck off the back of the house, a shop/woodworking studio for Jay (with an attached entertaining area in the front), plus a patio surrounding a fire pit.

·  Build a new fire pit

We need to have a finalized plan on where it will go before we build it!

·  Finish fencing backyard

Pretty close to this. There are two more panels of privacy fence that need to go up and we need to attach one last section of picket fence.

·  Go fishing

I never got to do this.

·  Design egg cartons to sell/giveaway eggs

Completed! And I’ve even sold some eggs. 

·  Complete two weeks of Couch25K (I’m aiming low)  

Completed and ran my first 5k.

I would say that I was pretty successful overall. Now I need to plan my Fall Bucket List. I’m thinking that it should have fewer items on the list!

How did you do on your Summer Bucket List?