It’s Summer of Funner 2014!
The Summer of Ability: Invention, Imagination, and Independence. 

Originally, we thought that our theme for the summer was going to be “Summer of Funner Nights.” However, when I broke my hand and had corrective surgery a few weeks ago, the kids and I decided that we wanted our summer to be about ability. We wanted to see what we could do without the use of a hand or a foot, without our eyes or our ears, and how these seeming limits might inspire us to do great things. So, in the spirit of the seemingly challenged and epically able, we’re embarking on the summer of invention, imagination, and independence.

Welcome to Summer of Funner, 2014!  Here’s our Love-to-Do List, a blotter of all of the things we plan to attempt over the summer. [Personally, I think it blows last summer’s bucket list out of the water – and that’s saying something.] Our famous Summer Books series is back, as well as our Family Film Festival, and we’re reviving our  Olympian Self-Sufficiency Series  from two summers ago.  We’ve got lots of brand new projects for the kitchen, the grill, the art table, the backyard science lab, and the city at large to keep us interested and inspired.  Stay tuned for an epic SOF!

Summer of Funner 2014: Love-to-Do List

✓ Backyard campout
✓ Shakespeare in the Park: As You Like It
✓ Fossil Souvenir Cookies
✓ Invent a popsicle
✓ Learn to play a new instrument
✓ Go crazy with hair chalk
✓ Peach hand pies – Peach Buttermilk Clafouti
✓ Read Treasure Island
✓ Kids learn to BBQ by themselves
✓ Explode stuff (not on the grill): Kids DIY Mini Glittery Pop Rocks Bath Bombs
✓ Family film fest & outdoor movies
✓ Iced lemon sugar cookies [See Souvenir Cookies] 
✓ Beach walks
✓ Paint WITH our toes
✓ Human anatomy colouring pages & kid-sized posters
✓ Make Dino-S’mores
✓ Life-Drawing [see our ambidextrous stuffed animal portraits!]
✓ Moby-Dick Sense and Sensibility Comics
✓ Write blazons
✓ Blind tasting picnic
✓ Make gelato
✓ Tie-dye party
Skinny-dipping [we may have done this, but we’re not telling!]
✓ Summer fudge Minecraft Creeper Cupcake Cake
✓ Support the War Amps
✓ Left-handed surrealist games
✓ Musée des Beaux Arts Sense & Sensibility Mad Libs
Pickled root vegetables: Look for these in FALL, 2014, on our sister site, The Lunchbox Season!
✓ Pirate anatomy posters
✓ Zesty Peanut Butter Nutella thumbprint cookies
✓ Ambidextrous drawing
✓ Late-night music jam
✓ DIY Stained glass window clings
✓ Cyborg  stories
✓ Three-legged races
✓ Shakespeare in the Park: Titus Andronicus
✓ Art Gallery Tour: The Body [+ scavenger hunt for 101 things!]
✓ Dinosaur bone collage [on our sister site]
✓ Fractured poetry slam
✓ Whittle sticks with real knives 
✓ Make donuts [See: THE BEST HOMEMADE DONUTS], bagels, and drunk berry jam.
Look for the bagels and jam in Fall 2014 on our sister site, The Lunchbox Season
✓ Illustrate Aelfric’s Life of St. Edmund: talking heads & wolves