41 Summer Activities To Try

For fun I like to make lists, yes I am very exciting. But for some reason I find making lists highly entertaining and for some reason they comfort me. If I am stressed I can make a list about something and I feel better. Or I make lists for cleaning or to do lists, for some reason drawing a big line over something I accomplished makes me feel super productive. In this case, we were lacking date nights and family activities to do. 

{Summer 2010- Lagoon}

Some of them aren't huge activities, they are just small ones that will take a minute to do. Some can be done as a family (meaning with A-Cakes) and some are more for date nights. But here are all the fun things that I want to do this summer

1. Go Garage Sale Hunting- Drive around and look for garage sales, they aren't hard to find, and find some new treasures. I found a ton of baby stuff last year this way. 
2. Go swimming.
3. Go to the zoo
4. Go to the Aquarium
5. Go to Lagoon- Lagoon is a amusement park in Utah. 
6. Visit a Farmer's Market- I haven't ever done this, but it sounds fun. 
7. Have a campout- either in the mountains, or set up a tent in the back yard or the house. If you do it in the house you can roast marshmallows over a gas stove top or a candle. 
8. Have a movie marathon- I want to watch Harry Potter, we probably can't watch all of them in one day, so we will probably have two or three of these. You can also do like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or you can make a girls day of it with your moms, friends, sisters, or your daughters and watch some of my favorites (Pride and Prejudice BBC version, Anne of Green Gables, or Gone with the Wind) Don't forget the treats, and perhaps your pajamas. Don't forget the popcorn.
9. Picnic in the park- You can make sandwiches or get subway or some fast food and eat it in the park, your kids will have lots of fun playing on the playground. I love picnics for dates, last year we  brought Where's Waldo books and I Spy books and looked at them at the park with our picnic. 
10. Have a sleepover in the living room- A great family activity for all of you to do, or just you and the hubby. I think we will invite A-Cakes to our sleepover for a bit, but she goes to bed early and then we will just let her sleep in her own bed. 
11. Go on a hike- I'm not a huge hiker, I am more into mountain strolls, or nice shady, not uphill hikes, so that is what we will do. 
12. Go to the mountain and roast hot dogs and s'mores over a fire-You don't even have to stay the night, pack it up when it gets late. 
13. Go star gazing- Drive a little ways away from the bright lights of your town and lay a blanket down and star gaze. We did this all the time when we were dating, we loved it. We had to stop cause I got eaten up by mosquitos (seriously I got 11 bites in one night and Jeremy got none, mosquitos love me, but in all fairness to them, I have rare blood type) Bring Bug spray
14. Have a candlelight dinner- This is probably more for a date, but I remember being a kid and on a few rare occasions my mom would let us all have a candle-lite dinner and it was so much fun. 
15. Make a new dinner and/or a dessert together- I love cooking with Jeremy, we have a ton of fun doing it together. It makes cooking way more enjoyable. Once for a date we seen a movie and then came home and made a big giant chocolate chip cookie and then decorated it with frosting. You can make Thai Coconut Chicken Bowls, Chile Verde Burritos, or Magic Cookie Bars. 
16. Board game night- a family thing, or invite friends over to play with you. Or you can make it a date night thing. We love playing Rummikub together, some other favorites are Skip-bo, Phase 10, and Quip It. Make it a great date night by making it a strip board game, strip uno or something. 
17. Go get sno-cones
18. Ice Cream run-or frozen yogurt
19. Thrift Store- Go to your local thift store and you each get $5.00 to spend on something. 
20. Dollar Store Shopping- I love love love the dollar store, I seriously have no self control there, how can I talk myself out of buying something if its only $1.00?? Kids will love this cause they can each get a few things and it costs you next to nothing. 
21. Wheeler Farm- I want to take A-Cakes here, it has lots of pretty flowers and cute animals that she can look at, and its free. 
22. Build a pillow or blanket fort
23. Blow Bubbles
24. Have a Nintendo Night- We love having Nintendo 64 nights, yes we still have an old N64 and it is so fun to play all those old games. We have nights where we invite Jeremy's family over to play and we take turns playing Mario Kart or Mario Party and games like that. You can have wii parties as well. Sometimes we go to my MIL's house and everyone plays on her Kinect (bowling and stuff) and that is a blast.
25. Have an 'Un'-Birthday- It doesn't need to be anyone's birthday to bake a cake, put up some streamers, light some candles and sing 'happy un-birthday to you.' When I was 16 I baked myself a cake and forced my family to sing to me. They thought I was crazy at first, but they agreed to so they could get cake, we ended up having a ton of fun and it was just silly to sing to someone when its not their birthday. Plus, as I said before, you get cake. 
26. Go to a restaurant just for dessert. 
27. Make Lemonade
28. Go to the mall- I want to go to this new mall they opened up called City Creek Mall, and the Gateway, both are in Salt Lake City, and it is fun to go downton once in a while, we don't go there too much. 
29. Have a 'Drive in movie' with our laptop- I want to go to a park or somewhere and watch a movie on a blanket with our laptop under the stars. 
30. Go to the planetarium.
31. Recreate our first date- Maybe we will do this for our anniversary in May. For our first date we went to the nicklecade (where somehow I won at airhockey, I am still super proud of it, my one time I won) and then went back to Jeremy's apartment and made chicken and artichoke pasta and then watched 10 Things I hate about you.
32. Try out a new restaurant
33. Put together a puzzle
34. Have a Italian or Mexican or Chinese night- Decorate your house or kitchen to look like that country, then make a meal with that country. You can get chopsticks or play mexican music. When I was like 11 I asked my mom if we could have a 'Japanese night' and we all sat around our coffee table on pillows and ate our dinner ( I am sure my mom had no idea what to cook for Japenese food, so I am sure it was just chinese food). 
35. Go house or apartment hunting- We are moving, yet again, sometime this summer, so we are going to be looking for a house or an apartment soon, I find doing this to be fun, if we were moving to a house it would be more fun though.
36. Make homemade popsicles- I do this a few times a year, I have popsicle molds and I usually just fill them with juice or lemonade- Try limeade, it is delicious. 
37. Water Balloon fight
38. Feed the ducks- We used to live in an apartment that had a small canal by it with a little trail running along the canal, the canal had a little family of ducks (baby ducks!) and they were adorable, we would bring them bread and feed them. I think A-Cakes would love doing this. 
39. Walk along the Jordan River Parkway- It is this pretty little trail that runs along the Jordan River here in Utah, that might coincide with feeding ducks
40. Invite people over for dinner- I love making dinner for people, I usually invite people over for dinner several times a year. Crock pot dinners like Pulled Pork Sandwiches are my favorite to serve, its less stress. 
41. Murder Mystery Night- I have wanted to host one of these for like over a year. I want to buy a murder mystery game, like the kind you listen to and you all dress up like your character and you eat dinner and stuff. I really really want to do it. I need to find a good game though, you have to buy them in game stores and they are like $50.00 which I am kinda cheap so I won't spend that much, or online. I did buy one online once, but I guess the seller found out all the pieces weren't there, so they refunded my money. Seriously though, this is my like dream to host one of these. I want it to be like 20's gangster flapper one, and we all eat spaghetti and talk in accents. 

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from my little Easter Bunny

Also don't forget the real meaning of Easter today. 

{source}

{Source}

My Momma's Home

My family moved to New Mexico just over two years ago. I was sad cause we are super close, and now they are ten hours away, but I still see them a lot, like ever couple months, and it makes a nice place to go on a cheap vacation a couple times a year. 

The houses in New Mexico are all mostly adobe looking, which is different, but I think its cool. My mom did have a hard time at first with her house since she loved the one she moved out of here in Utah, but she has since decorated it really cute and I think it is looking fantastic. Here are some pics of it. 

ENTRY WAY

I love the cute red chairs. And thats my brother's ukulele. 

KITCHEN

I am so jealous of how huge her kitchen is! She also has a dining room table that is gorgeous but we had been scrap-booking on it and it was a little messy. She has double ovens, and even a desk in the kitchen too. 

BATHROOM

MY SISTER'S ROOM

Gotta love the pink electric guitar

Vinyl lettering on her wall. 

Easter Egg Wreath

While in New Mexico my mom asked me to make her a wreath for Easter. And we all know my love for wreaths. So we perused pinterest and found some that we liked (I will do a post on some ideas soon). We went to Hobby Lobby with some ideas. My mom really wanted one with blue speckled eggs and moss and maybe a nest. But geez, by the time we gathered all the stuff to make it, it was well over 20 bucks. Then we found this easter garland with little twigs and eggs and stuff, it was really cute and had the eggs she wanted. It was cheaper to just take the garland apart and use that to decorate the wreath, and we thought that it would be easier too, so thats what we did. 

I kinda forgot to take pictures of the garland before. So just use your imagination. 

I really like how it turned out and my mom said she loved it. It was also super easy to make. 

A New Mexican Siesta

So if your new here, my parents and my little sister live in New Mexico. They moved there two years ago  because of my dad's work. We still see my mom pretty often, she is always visiting here, like every couple months or so, but my dad can't get off that much time off from work, so we don't get to see him as often, which makes me sad. So my mom decided to fly me down to New Mexico so I could visit them. That is where I have been the last week. I of course took my A-Cakes with me because my dad wanted to see her, he hadn't seen her since Christmas and she has already grown so much since. 

It was a nice break though. I wish my hubby could have come, but he had to work. 

It was awesome having everyone entertain A-Cakes though, I even got a nap or two in. 

I forgot to take many pics though. It didn't help my camera was dead for half the trip.

Everyone loved spending time with A-Cakes. We took her to the zoo, bowling, the mall, and out to eat ALOT (which was super yummy). 

Crockpot Teriyaki chicken

I found the bestest Teriyaki Chicken recipe. It is so delicious. I love making ricebowls, and so I am always on the hunt for a good chicken and teriyaki sauce recipe. This one is soo good. And its in your crockpot, so Bonus! 

Picture from Lake lure Cottage

You can find the recipe over at Lake Lure Cottage. 

Some tips about this recipe. If you want sauce for your rice, I would double the recipe except the chicken so that it makes extra teriyaki sauce, but I think next time I make it I will add a bit less sugar to it, since if you are doubling it, it is a lot of sugar. 

Also whenever I use my crockpot, I use reynold's slow cooker liners. They are one of my favorite discoveries. Cause usually if I make something in there, I have to sit and soak my crockpot for like a day in order to be able to clean it. Its a freaking pain in the butt. The liners are so worth it, you just throw them away after and then cleaning the crockpot is a snap. 

Garlic Brown Sugar Chicken

I love pinterest for recipes. Seriously I have found like a gagillion new recipes on there. 

Here is an awesome recipe I made the other night. 

It was one of the easiest things I have ever made. (Like seriously pancakes are harder than this dish)

It is called Garlic Brown Sugar Chicken. It only has four ingredients, so its easy to make and a really cheap meal to make too.

You can find the recipe for it over at Modern Day Mom's. 

(I didn't take a picture of the chicken I made, so I used the picture from Modern Day Mom's as well. )