Father’s Day was last weekend, and my husband decided he wanted a pretty low key couple of days, so that’s what we did. Saturday we ran a couple of errands including finally submitting our passport applications (first for the kiddo and renewals for both of us) and then a picnic at the park before heading home for the rest of the day.
The kiddo actually slept in until 7:30AM Sunday morning, so we ended up having a late breakfast with my parents and then went into downtown Edmonds to try out the new-ish Market Fishmonger restaurant for lunch. It was really busy, so we grabbed the food and headed down to eat it by the beach.
We headed home after that and had no plans for the rest of the day other than having dinner with our roommate, but our neighbor ended up grilling and smoking a ton of tasty food and invited us down to their house. We ended up staying way late for a Sunday night, but I’d still call it reasonably low key because all we had to do was walk a few houses back up the hill to get home and to bed. Really, it’s hard to beat having neighbors that are also good friends.

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1. I was wearing that new to me sweater the other day when my grandmother noticed there was a snag in it, so she borrowed it from me and sewed it up so well that I can’t even find where it was.
Being able to mend my own clothing is on my some day learn list as my sewing skills are VERY basic, but it’s hard when I have people in my family who are so skilled and willing to do the occasional repair for me. Thanks Grama! I so appreciate it.
I also received another hand me down shirt from a different friend this past week, and I think it may be my new favorite for the summer. I’m finding the more I talk about my extended clothing ban, especially now that it’s well surpassed the two year mark, the more I find people offering me items before they donate them to the thrift store.
I love it, and it means I can extend this ban of mine longer than I could have on my own. Plus, it’s a great way to make sure those discarded clothes actually get a lot more love rather than having them land at a secondhand store and hoping someone loves them (I try and do the same with anything I get rid of as well).
2. I finished my most recent library book on the walk back to return it on the day it was due back, saving myself that late fee. The 10¢ a day overdue fine is obviously not going to break my budget, but by making sure I get my books returned on time, I don’t turn around and find I’ve kept each book for an extra week or two, which does add up.
The book I just finished was Dreamland by Sam Quinones, which is about the opioid crisis in the United States. I have a few problems with the style with which the book the book was written, but it’s an in depth look on an important topic, and thus I would highly recommend it. I’m now onto something a bit more lighthearted but equally engrossing, Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker:
“We have been warned that ordinary is less than, a sign of inferiority, an indicator that so much more waits if we could just get the mix right. But the truth is, most of life is pretty ordinary, so it is precisely inside the ordinary elements, the same ones found the world over – career, parenting, change, marriage, community, suffering, the rhythms of faith, disappointment, being a good neighbor, being a good human – that an extraordinary life exists.”
3. It actually rained two days this week, which meant I was able to skip watering the garden pretty much all week. As much as the dry days are lovely, once you start gardening, you find a better appreciation for the wet days. As we’ve gotten farther away from growing any of our own food, we’ve gotten more disconnected with what constitutes “good” weather as well.

Thanks to both the warm and wet weather we’ve had, we are continuing to harvest strawberries and now the very first of the raspberries are ripening. Of course, I didn’t actually get any of the first raspberries this year because they went into little kid bellies before I even knew they were ripe. We have more now though, so I’m getting to snack on them as well, and they sure do taste a hundred times better than anything bought from the grocery store, even in season.
4. I had a friend and her kids over for dinner one night and we were able to make another pretty simple meal consisting of the local bulk beef we purchased as well as pantry and garden items. We did however pick up some ice cream from the grocery store so we could make strawberry shakes from the berries picked out of our front yard.
Low key, frequent dinner parties are my very favorite, and having food on hand to quickly scale up to a few more people makes it easy to extend invites last minute. I also don’t feel the need to have my home 100% clean before I invite anyone over, which also means we host much more frequently. As a family of serious extroverts, we could have people over two and three times a week on a regular basis and still be ready for the next night.

5. I don’t remember who told me that they waited to cash in their Bing points until they had more than one of the $5 Amazon gift card rewards, but I took that advice and waited until I had enough to cash in for $20 worth of rewards.
$5 and $20 rewards are both not huge numbers in the grand scheme of things, but I find them still extremely satisfying. And then I make sure to transfer an equal amount of cash into my “Found Savings” account to make sure I actually see that savings long term.
Exercise Update
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were filled with short and long walks outdoors. As the weather stays nice most days now, we find ourselves outside even more than normal, and a lot of that time on foot. If time wasn’t an issue, I’d rather walk pretty much everywhere.
Monday was a short run outside and then Tuesday was a run outside followed by some time at the gym. Wednesday was another run before work, which always starts my day off on the right note.
How do you make the best of good weather? How much time do you spend outdoors?
Summer is the best in the PNW. We’re just relaxing and enjoying ourselves around town this month. Your neighborhood sounds really great.
Especially right now while the air is clear! 🙂
No kidding. I keep telling the husband that we have to go on ALL of the hikes and do ALL of the yardwork before the smoke arrives. We’ll be hoping for a bit of rain through the summer for that reason as well.
Homegrown raspberries are the best! We counted 2 already and a bunch more on their way.
We are definitely feeling that same pressure about the smoke. The last few years have been so bad 🙁
i ran 3 days outdoors this week. my back hurts a little but it really makes a difference and it’s still during the work day. i was saying about 5 years ago that those purdue pharma people should be jailed for their part in the opioid crisis. i don’t know about your book but it really was a bunch of marketers driving doctors to prescribe more and higher dosages of basically high grade smack. “come in with chronic back pain and leave a junkie.” there’s the real slogan so long as sales were rising.
Oh yeah, that book dives deep into Purdue Pharma. And well done on the outdoors runs!!
Love this! We do the same thing in our neighborhood on a regular basis. This has been a bit of an off week for us as it’s the 1st full week of summer and I think everybody’s a bit tired adjusting to the new schedule, especially the kids. Mine and several others are in jr. lifeguards for 3 hours/day and a bunch others are in all day camp. I’m looking forward to some impromptu dinners – hopefully next week! Cheers!
I love it so much than you have the California version of my neighborhood ❤️
I’m betting it was someone before me but I’m absolutely hoarding my Bing rewards until I have enough for more than one $5 redemption but it’s weird, I don’t have the option of Amazon gift cards, only Target and a few other things that I don’t particularly want so much.
My new favorite thing of many favorite things about our library is that they now auto-renew all our checked out items whenever they can, AND they let little kids have library cards without fines!
Weird, I’m not sure Target is an option for me. Love that amazon is. And that auto renew feature and no fine cards are awesome!
I’m guilty of going straight to the watermelon too, unless there’s cantaloupe….
I actually hate watermelon 😉
We’re taking advantage of nicer weather in NYC to do nature walks. On the theme of frugality, we did a lot of walking at an amazing outdoor flea market not too far from NYC — Stormville, upstate NY. We heard about this monthly flea market from the show, Flea Market Flip, so we checked it out last weekend. I got 12 pieces of clothes — all known brands, like Ann Taylor, Vera Wang, etc — for $21.50. And I got 3 hours of walking in, since I was so captivated by all the stands.
Oh wow, that sounds like a really fun place to check out!
I miss Seattle raspberries soooo much! I had a bunch of them growing in my backyard in my Seattle house and they were delicious. I’m not even a huge raspberry fan normally, but those were delectable.
I still commend you for growing your own food. With all the sunlight down here, I’m sure I could but… It’s just too much for me to contemplate. Plus, I might have to keep the planters small enough to move indoors for when the truly scorching days (110+) hit. Still, I’d love my own strawberries. Mmmmm.
Homegrown berries are like a different food than what you can buy from the store. As far as strawberries are concerned, they need very little soil, so they could be a good choice for something that could be brought inside pretty easily.
Mmm raspberries, I am having some right now (with a slice of nutella toast). Your strawberries looked so amazing on Insta. I marvel at your ability to have dinner parties a few times a week (we are a family of introverts, though I’m trying to figure out what my son is I think he might be extroverted, lol).
Oh yum. Hard to go wrong with Nutella. And luckily we are a family full of extroverts. It would be hard if it was split I think.