If you’re a faithful Chattanooga Moms follower, you may have seen a post of mine in the past that was centered around family bucket lists. I’m a bucket list momma through and through. It’s one of my favorite ways to create memories with my boys, but 2020 threw a bit of a kink in my typical seasonal lineups. We love to do things around Chattanooga, but thanks to the global pandemic, many of our go-to items didn’t make the cut this year. We’ve had to get a bit more creative when making our lists, but we like a challenge.
I make four lists a year: one for spring, one for summer, one for fall, and one for Christmas. Even though we’ve been limited in what we can do this year, our lists have really helped break up the monotony. They don’t have to be long and fancy; in fact, short and sweet often are the most fun! My biggest advice is to keep activities age appropriate and don’t overdo it. If you have a list with a ton of items on it, you’re going to get burnt out quickly. I typically add in things I know that we’re going to be doing anyway, so I’m killing two birds with one stone.
Like I mentioned above, I had to think outside of the box a bit this year when it came to what we wanted to do. Even if you can’t go to a lot of the places you’d normally think of as staples in Chattanooga, there are so many awesome outdoor places you can hit up. Chattanooga is called the “Scenic City” for a good reason — the possibilities are endless! To be honest with you, having simplified lists this year has been a breath of fresh air.
As the holiday season quickly approaches, I’ve found that I’m all about simple in 2020.
My boys love knowing what’s on our bucket lists, so this year I’ve taken it a step further and started illustrating them myself. This way, I can be in complete control of how it looks and the formatting. That may not matter to some, but I love the personalization of it. We’ve started printing the lists out, and when we complete an item on the list, we mark it off. I’m not an artist by any means, but a little love can go a long way in the art department.
To illustrate our lists, I use my iPad, an Apple Pencil, and the Procreate app. I draw out our activities just like I would on a piece of paper. I have always loved doodling, so I just think of this as “adult doodling” since technology is involved. I’ve also started dabbling in Adobe Illustrator, so I’m hoping to learn the ropes of it soon and put it in my art rotation. Drawing has been so therapeutic for me this year, so it was a win-win for everyone involved. I promise you, you don’t have to be Leonardo da Vinci to illustrate a bucket list…your kids will love it regardless.
As you can see on the lists I made for my family, there’s only one specific place in Chattanooga we headed to this fall, and that was Rock City. Everything else is generic enough that we didn’t have to worry about limited entry or hours. Even though several of our favorite spots had to be skipped this year, we’ve still had a ton of fun crossing things off.
As silly as bucket lists and illustrations may seem in the grand scheme of things, they’ve played a big part in my children’s childhood. We are ready to usher in the holiday season as we do these things as a family. These drawings and memories will last a lifetime!
