Five Things Friday

A couple weeks ago I shared my big plans for the summer.  This week I stumbled upon a great blog post – this family makes a summer list each year.  It’s filled with fun activities, events to look forward to, accomplishments they hope to achieve, etc.  I was inspired to start a list of my own.  I already had a running list I call “cool stuff” in my Simplenote app (highly recommended, check it out!).  That list includes fun things to do when friends come to visit or I have a free weekend.  I started my own “summer fun list” which includes some items from the other list plus many more, and I’ll continue adding to it whenever I think of something new.  Today I’ll share a few things I’ve added so far:

1. Try all the ice cream parlors in town, make my own popsicles.  I read about making yogurt pops somewhere, and just saw this easy recipe for fudgesicles  that I can’t wait to try out!  I’ve also been working my way through all of the restaurants in Salem (there are a lot!) so I figure I can tackle all of the ice cream places over the summer and be on my way to finishing the bigger task.
2. Visit farmers markets.  There are two a week in Utah (breakfast and lunch are provided by the program, but I’ll get to make my own dinners out of delicious local produce!) and one a week in Salem.  I’d also love to set up a booth for all the Salem Etsy sellers at our local market, but that may have to wait until next year.
3. Pick blueberries, learn to preserve.  Last summer I visited my friend in New Hampshire and we canoed onto a lake to pick the blueberries no one had gotten to yet.  I got over a quart to take home and freeze.  Having blueberries I’d picked myself made the occasional winter meal much more exciting (delicious fruit and fun memories).  This summer I’d like to plan ahead better and preserve a variety of summer fruits and memories.
4. Start a scrapbook.  Speaking of preserving memories, I used to scrapbook regularly, but then life got busy and it fell to the wayside.  I also realized recently that all of my recent photos are of plants and yarn.  Those are definitely my priority, but I’d like to have a few snapshots of all the cool things I’ve been doing.  Plus, scrapbooking is fun!
5. Picnic and play. Yesterday I was at the arcade (for a Best Buddies event) and my co-worker and I won a boomerang.  That same co-worker and I also made a list of local lakes a while back.  The plan is to picnic, swim, learn to throw a boomerang so it actually comes back, fly kites and generally frolic in the sun.

I may have to make a strict schedule of fun things if I want to accomplish my whole list (this is just the beginning!).  But of course, the great thing about summer is that whatever schedule I make up for myself, I’m welcome to break it as many times as I want.

What’s on your summer fun list?