1. Visits to 9 Mile Creek with my dude. In between the sweltering heat and torrential down pouring this week, my boyfriend and I managed to find times to venture out of the AC and into the wilderness. Or as much of the “wilderness” as you can find in Bloomington. We had to use basically an entire can of bug spray per visit, but it was still worth it. Also, my boyfriend seems to have a habit of taking random pictures of me as soon as he knows I’m not looking:

Our shadows over the creek:

2. I finally found time to start cleaning up all the ugly that is thrown up all over my cabinets. Removable contact paper is my new best friend.

My tools

My bathroom cabinets before

My bathroom cabinets after

I also replaced the chevron on the kitchen drawers with plain turquoise. The zig zags were making me feel drunk every time I looked at them.

3.Volunteering at the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child midnight release party. Some days I feel like I am constantly out of my element, so it was nice to be somewhere where I felt completely at ease. Basically, it was nice to be surrounded by fellow nerdy weirdos for a change. Except they tried to make me do face painting. While some of my fellow volunteers were painting complicated dragons and dark marks, every single kid that left me got a really crooked lightning bolt on their forehead.

4. My roommate brought home this cow picture to coordinate with the pig I brought home a few months ago. It’s almost like being at home on the farm again, except with more attitude. Speaking of farm animals, somebody brought their pet pig (my dream pet) into one of the libraries today for story time. I almost fainted I was so excited. Also, every single picture I hang up is crooked.

5. The plants my ex roommate bequeathed me upon my departure from our college apartment two years ago are still, by some miracle, alive. Well, three out of five are anyway. Basically my apartment is the plant version of And Then There Were None. 

6. I have all the supplies I need to turn my sad excuse for a coffee table into a hopefully comfier and prettier ottoman. After I thought about taking on the project, I discovered my roommate just happened to have  a piece of foam that was exactly the right size, so I decided it was meant to be. Hopefully I can complete that project this weekend. And hopefully it doesn’t look ridiculously awful.

7. July, the first month of my shopping ban, officially passed and I (more or less) succeeded in only buying food. The only two things I bought besides food were mostly necessary (In a very loose sense). I had to buy a tube to go tubing with my good friends down the Apple River, otherwise there wouldn’t have been enough. But with my Amazon reward credit, it was basically nothing. Also, because I was assigned to the Gryffindor table at the release party and was encouraged to dress up, I bought a Gryffindor tie. Probably not necessary, but whatever. Sadly I’ll probably get a lot more use out of it in the future than the tube.

But seriously, that was it for non-food purchases. My credit card bill was 1/3 of the amount it was in June. I still would deem that a success thus far!