Summer Bucket List Checkoff 2015

Let's hang on to summer just a little bit longer, shall we? 

I shared lots of pics of our summer last week, but this time I'm gonna do a little check off of everything we actually followed through with from our summer bucket list Kaydin and I came up with this spring.

I think we made pretty good progress through this long list! We checked off most things! Some are still on the to-do list but we made a pretty good dent through the short summer season!

Kaydin's Summer Bucket List

*Adventureland

*Swimming at the aquatic center

*Read 10 chapter books
This summer we just didn't read as much as we should've. It's a priority again this school year though!

*Get slushies from Tropical Snow

*Go to the art center

*Go to South Dakota with Grammy and Papa

*Visit Living History Farms

*Play with friends

*Set up the sprinkler in the backyard

*Get a new snail for the fish tank.
This is still on the to-do list.Tried a few times to get a couple new snails and it never worked out for one reason or another.

*Stay up late til midnight one night watching movies

*Make beaded jewelry

*Make new loom band creations

*Fashion show
She made a fashion show out of trying on her new school clothes.

Mollie's Summer Bucket List

*Pick wild flowers

*Visit the various farmers markets around the city

 

*See Pitch Perfect 2
Plans fell through to see the movie in theaters, but it's in the works for when it comes out to rent or buy.

*Make homemade fruit filled, low sugar popsicles
Someday!

*Visit Washington DC

*Harvest lots of food from the garden

*Go strawberry and blueberry picking
We got the strawberries but not the blueberries.

*Buy a surplus of strawberries, blueberries and peaches for freezing and preserving

*Lots of trips to the frozen yogurt shop

*Bike the High Trestle Trail
Still haven't made it up there! Someday!

*Can chopped tomatoes from the garden
 These tomatoes werem't from my garden, rather Mom and Dad's and my friend's Summer's, but I still put em in a mason jar! Hopefully someday I'll get the green thumb for producing some tomatoes!

*Go to a few garage sales
Never stopped at any this summer despite the hundreds of signs always lining the intersections.

*Visit the State Fair

*Indulge in a smore's frappuchino

*Make homemade ice cream
Someday!

*Trip to Ames for dinner at Hickory Park
We didn't make it up this summer but hopefully soon!

*Attend Des Moines Arts Festival

The Art Cart

A little organization, some cheap thrift stores find and recycling, and a cute little cart and you have yourself a great arts and crafts area for your home!

Kaydin is such a little artist. She loves to draw and craft. Her bedroom was bursting at the seams with supplies. We did our best to keep it organized and picked up but that led to everything being in a tote or just piled up under her bed.

Putting it out of sight led to her not crafting as much. She wasn't using her artistic abilities as often as I wanted to see. 

And when she did get the itch to create, it was always a huge mess to clean up and a puzzle to get everything back into the tote. Not ideal.

Last fall I came up with the idea of this type of cart to store all of her art supplies. It was actually Meg, from Whatever, that inspired me.

Last year on Black Friday, World Market had their carts 50% off so Mom and I made a trip there to snag this metal one. If you want to get one even cheaper, IKEA has them, too.

All of the storage is either glass jars or other glass containers. Some are just washed out cookie butter, mayonnaise, pasta or some other recycled food jar. Others are random finds from thrift stores. I'd been collecting jars of all kind and was able to put a bunch of them to use!

We've added to it since last fall, and just recently I did a sorting and organization overhaul and now it looks like this! Every shelf full and a jar to divide all her supplies in an organized fashion.

The organization freak in me just loves how it looks now! Give me a closet to organize or a drawer of papers or stuff to sort through and I'm happy!! :) That doesn't mean I don't accumulate clutter (I do!) or have a super clean house all the time (I don't!) but the act of it all is really fun to me. #weird

All of the containers ended up working pretty well with what I chose to stick in it. Especially the big fish bowl for all the crayons and the smaller one for the glue sticks.

Having it all on display and sorted nicely makes it so much more inviting and feasible to pull things out easily. It sits in a corner of her bedroom and is always in view just waiting for her creativity to flow!

Now to always just make sure it looks this clean and organized. I'm crossing my fingers! ;) Although, Kaydin didn't get my love for organization so I'm not holding my breath!

Do you have an artist in your household? How do you wrangle all of the supplies?

#labordayweekend2015

All the fun of our Labor Day Weekend 2015...

Kaydin and I dug in the garden while Tim finished staining the deck. Pulled all the beets up and found more success than last year!

Our strawberries are still blooming and producing so we shared a few with Squeaky and Ciara.

Saturday morning we visited the downtown market with my co-worker Vanessa.

Pupusa for me!

After the market I stopped by the DMU campus where I work to pick up some acorns. And then roasted them at home and hit them with a coat of gold spray paint.

Next on the agenda was the art center with my friend Megan. Neither of us had been there, only Kaydin, and it was on our summer bucket list!

This little table is full of sunflowers seeds.

Hand-made, hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds! They looked SO real!

And then lunch at the restaurant there. If you visit still this season, try the caprese panini with pesto. Delish!

After the art center we headed to the library to pick up some new reading material. And then headed home to crack open the books!

I found quite the surprise when I filled up my water can to give all the plants a drink. This little bugger popped out the hole. Took a little bit to catch him, but we released him back out to the wild where he belongs!

Later that afternoon I cranked up the oven and made peach crisp with the fresh peaches I grabbed at the market earlier that morning.

Sunday consisted of lots of cleaning, organizing and a full dinner of my favorite grilled foods!

Monday morning was filled with pulling out the fall decor and going on a run with the dogs. Later we ended up at Dairy Queen to fulfill a promise I made to Kaydin. At her softball practice last week she hit every pitch the coach tossed to her! And hadn't picked up a bat since her last game back in May. I was super impressed! She requested a trip to DQ so that was promised as one our to-do's for the weekend.

More organizing happened Monday afternoon and evening. I got this cart last fall at World Market for all of her art supplies. More inventory and messes required a redo of everything. I love how it looks and that it's out in the open so she sees it all and uses it more!

Our fall decor is up! My favorite time of year!

Kaydin baby spent a few hours this weekend making a new loom creation, a dragon. She's making good progress!!

We had 90+ degree weather all weekend but still fit in some fun outdoor activities and got lots accomplished inside while enjoying the A/C.


What were you up to this Labor Day Weekend?