• pick lots of strawberries and blueberries to enjoy and put up for a long winter
• enjoy a huge, fresh sandwich from the Village Cheese Shanty in Leland
• feel good after running the National Cherry Festival 15K – this is coming up more quickly than I thought so we’ll see how good I feel… This Saturday!
• I know I said (err, wrote) at some point about how I WAS NOT going to make marshmallows from scratch (so utterly Martha), but with it being s’mores season and all, I’m inspired to make some marshmallows, roast them (a bit burnt is my style), then sandwich them with some really good chocolate between a couple graham cracker pieces. Wondering if I will notice a difference. What do you think? I haven’t done this yet, but Chris made me an amazing s’more last weekend with the most gigantic marshmallow on the planet. Have you seen those in the stores? Crazy.
• spend lots of evenings on the porch with dear Chris. Ongoing. More to come!
• wear a pretty sundress while playing bocce and sipping a fancy cocktail
• swim, swim, swim, swim. A lot. I’ve been swimming, but certainly not A LOT. More to come.
• eat lots of salads and grilled meat. Yes!
• enjoy my annual corn dog and maybe even an elephant ear or funnel cake… oof. We took in our fair share of the National Cherry Festival last night and I enjoyed my annual corn dog, a few fries and four of us shared an elephant ear. Delish!
• make progress on my Dairy Lodge Diet. I’ve been slacking lately and I need to get back at it!
• take Wren to her first Northwest Michigan Fair. “Goin’ to the fair, goin’ to the fair, goin’ to the Northwest Michigan Fair!”
• frequent our local farmer’s markets and art fairs
• have a big garage sale and get rid of some stuff (err, junk). Saturday, July 24! The word is out.
• visit Werner’s vineyard. He makes my favorite local wine: Left Foot Charley’s Pinot Blanc. Lovely!
• pickle something from my garden. Chris spotted a cucumber the other day so maybe soon?
• make some kind of jam. Strawberry?
• be overwhelmed with harvesting all the veggies from my garden. This would be a good problem to have. We’ll see… so far, so good. With this heat the spinach is going to seed and the lettuce is going crazy. The tomato plants are almost as tall as I am, which isn’t saying much, but it’s a little scary.
• enjoy the summer sunrises as much as the sunsets
• stay up late to be awed by the Perseid meteor showers in August
• picnic, picnic, picnic. Doesn’t everything taste better when you’re eating it outside?
• erect our hammock and enjoy a few lazy moments
• read a book. The whole book. Wow, what an idea! Got any suggestions?
• run through the sprinkler
• chase the ice cream truck
• be barefoot most of the time. My feet are dirty…
• make Wren’s play kitchen – similar to this one
• create bouquets from our zinnias and bells of ireland
• dance with the little birdie at the Cedar Polka Fest. She is going to LOVE it! MISS! 🙁
• get on the water in someone else’s boat… anyone?
• take Chris out to eat at Siren Hall for a date night. It was absolutely lovely. The food was amazing and the company even better!

• take in a few films at the Traverse City Film Festival. Schedule comes out this Friday. Looking forward to it. I love the TCFF.
• do a weekend camping trip and eat hot dogs, plain potato chips, a bottle of Faygo rock & rye and german potato salad from a can
• sleep outside
• enjoy a campfire and cheesy camp songs

How’s your summer so far, lovelies? Are you beating the heat? Is this expected to break soon? Please say it is because I don’t want to run ten miles in this on Saturday. Yuck. Here’s hoping for 70s again… Cheers!