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?