My 30 before 30 list, 11-20

My 30 before 30 goals 1-5 here and 6-10 here.

Continued:

11. Bake a multi-layer cake from scratch. Thanks to All Cakes Considered and my KitchenAid mixer, I dipped my toe into baking from scratch a few years ago. I’m not going to go all rainbow cake crazy, but maybe my next b-day cake will be a double layer creation, with some fruit filling in the center. Joe wants this pineapple upside down carrot cake again for his 30th in October.

12. Do Yoga in the Park at Gray’s Lake. Canoeing and jogging there are great, but I’ve never joined the huge crowd that shows up for downward dog. Schedule here.

Photo via thetomorrowplan.com

13. Learn how to get a hula hoop twirling from my arm to my waist. You know the ladies with the hypnotic, fluid hooping moves you see at music fests? I can keep a hoop going while walking, but that’s about it. (Thanks for the inspiration, Ash!)

14. Float down the river in a stock tank. What can I say? The suburban Chicagoite in me is weirded out and delighted by the concept of floating a river in the kind of tank livestock drink out of. Joe’s from the Iowa-Nebraska border, and this is more of a Nebraska thing.

Image via outdoornebraska.ne.gov

15. Have my own stamp fabricated. There’s a place in town my friends at Ephemera have these done, and I’ve always wanted to make one. Maybe a little hand-drawn baby manatee reading a book and wearing glasses? You can’t buy that.

16. Take a spontaneous road trip to somewhere more than 2 hours away. Traveling with a kid takes a lot more planning, but I can tell we’re already becoming more adept at pulling together what we need to leave the house. I’d like to think that we could pull off a random adventure sometime. It will help that I’ve switched to working just four days a week and have Fridays off. (Semi-related, my amazing friend Amy took her toddler daughter backpacking and survived!)

17. Make cheese in the kitchen and have a few friends over for a wine & cheese tasting. Homemade ricotta? A few selections from The Cheese Shop. Maybe with some spent grain bread Joe makes? We’d be so fancy and modern homesteader-y!

18. Plant sunflowers. There’s a totally overgrown, weedy back corner in our garden and after passing several homes with thriving giant sunflower patches on walks, I think they’d be the perfect thing to grow back there.

19. Have a buy nothing new month. (Except groceries, of course.) I took a pay cut to stay home on Fridays, so this is probably financially advisable. It should probably involve taking stock of the things I already own, and paring down.

20. Take an online, non-academic class. Craftsy has lots of sewing classes and Skillshare might help me learn how to make my blog prettier, or get better at using my SLR camera.