That being said, I pretty much threw my budget out the window the day the sun showed up (somewhere around July 4th, the official start of summer here in the Pacific Northwest.)

I didn’t do it on purpose! But I also didn’t realize what I was doing.

……….Ok fine, I wasn’t paying attention!

It rains a lot here in Portland. Like, all the damn time. Literally 9 months of the year. So when it starts to warm up, and we see the sun for the first time in months, we Portlanders immediately bust out our shorts and flip flops and bask in it! Even though in all likelihood it’s probably only 50 degrees that day. But I digress….back to the less than stellar budget keeping skills that ensued.

Summer to me means warm evening drinks on the patio, days at the river, nights with all the windows open, early morning dogs walks, music festivals, and general excess. When we finally all emerge from self induced hibernation we are all desperate for human interaction. Here are some of the things I did this summer that definitely didn’t take my budget into account:

-I saw a lot of live music (some of this is free, most of it is not)
-I wandered around new-to-me neighborhoods as I love wandering, and stopped in any and all new coffee shops to try all the delicious cold brew coffee offerings
-I spent many hours strolling the isles of my local book stores to escape the mid afternoon heat
-3 of my close friends had birthdays so obviously celebrating was in order
-backyard barbecues and potlucks, every weekend
-air conditioning. ’nuff said

Summer for me is about spending time with my friends and I tend to ignore the costs associated. This brings me to tacos. My groups of friends and I are full blown obsessed with tacos. We were on a quest this summer to find the best tacos Portland had to offer. Instead of trying to perfect a recipe at home we traipsed all across the city trying all the awesome taco restaurants we could find. Did we find the best tacos in the city? Maybe. But at what cost?