When I was growing up, my family had this tradition: as soon as summer was in sight, we would all sit down together and brainstorm all the things we wanted to do on our holiday. The list was endless: iced coffee, the water park, bake chocolate chip cookies, have friends over for a movie night, hang up a disco ball on the back porch, show animals at the county fair, have night-swims in our inflatable pool. My mom would compile all our ideas in one big poster, and we named it our Summer Fun List.
Now that we’re older and are going our separate ways, our summer fun list together has simplified. But when I sat down to plan the month of June, I kept thinking of all the moments I want to experience and remember as the moments that defined Summer 2019 for me. I flipped to a new spread in my journal and started doodling.
In the end, I made a list of NINETEEN things—which drives my OCD-self a little crazy but I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do—that I want to do this summer. I was actually so brimming with inspiration that I made a “Summer 2019”-themed Pinterest board that you can find here.
I’ll be honest with you, guys, this bullet journal spread is a disaster—but it was such a FUN disaster, I just kept going, hoping it would look a little less like a trainwreck than it did when I started. It worked, too! I figured it might do the internet good to see a mediocre journal page for once???
At any rate, what’s important is the summer fun list itself (2019 edition), which I have transcribed below for your perusing pleasure. If you want to create your own list, go check out this blog post I put together last year, “50 Ideas for Summer Memories,” for ideas.
Summer Fun List: 2019 Edition
- stargaze from a jacuzzi (my best friend and I are going to set up her jacuzzi this weekend)
- pool days, movie nights: the best combo
- get a jeep of my own, so I can stash my own CD collection and polaroids and protein bars, and decorate it with cool aesthetic bumper stickers.
- attend a hot yoga class and see what all the fuss is about
- go swing dancing
- a bonfire at the beach
- buy and listen to the new upcoming seventh album from Taylor Swift (fondly nicknamed #TS7 because we don’t have a title yet)
- take a long bike ride down to the beach
- fourth of july fireworks (and sparklers; we must have sparklers always and always)
- go see a movie at the drive-in cinema (Toy Story 4, anyone?)
- sidewalk chalk (never too old)
- eat lots of fruit!!! visit farmer’s market to stock up on berries, watermelon, peaches, apricots, pineapple, ripe tomatoes, maybe even coconut, who knows.
- binge-watch Stranger Things season 3
- get up early to see the sunrise
- go read on the beach all morning and get gorgeously tan
- road trip to nowhere (lots of music necessary)
- hike a mountaintop
- frozen yoghurt (whoop whoop!)
- go find cool new coffee shops and spend my mornings writing mysteriously and gazing out the window, deep in contemplation.
One last little housekeeping note: there is a whole lot of summer to be lived, and writing to be done, and books to be read—and thus, I’m going to bump my weekly posting back down. Starting next week, I’ll be posting every Monday for the foreseeable future.
Happy planning!
<3 Olivia Grace
