The Anti-Trend Summer: How to Design a Custom Summer Theme for Your Family

Why I am trading the viral internet aesthetics for 1890s simplicity—and how to build a custom seasonal theme that brings your home joy.

If you have been online at all the past few weeks, you have no doubt seen that “90’s mom summer” is trending. I have seen sentiments and discourse all over the map from people (digitally) rolling their eyes at its ridiculousness to others fully embracing the romanticization of simpler times and how to bring that into the modern day. Heck, I even wrote an article here about how I took the trend to the next level and got a flip phone for a month to experiment with it over the summer.

Whatever you may feel about trends/movements online, it’s clear that modern-day moms seem to be yearning for their summers to feel less chaotic and more calm. And what is wrong with a little whimsy and nostalgia?

However, while I encourage everyone to take inspiration from online trends, adapt them to their lives, and leave what doesn’t work, why don’t we switch it up and create our own summer theme as moms?

Internet, I see your “90’s mom summer,” and I raise you my “Anne of Green Gables summer.”

I too long for simplicity and sentimentality, not just in my summer but in my motherhood. But I want to take it a little further back.

1990’s? More like 1890’s!

(I know Anne of Green Gables was written in 1905 but, hey, close enough lol!)

The Set Up

So what does it mean to have an “Anne of Green Gables summer”?

Well, sweet friend, I am so glad you asked.

I am drawing inspiration both from my own life and my favorite childhood book for this.

1. Write down summer patterns and preferences

   1. Are y’all traveling a lot? Do you spend a ton of time outdoors, or do you prefer to relax in the air conditioning? What rhythms are important to you and your family during this time? Notice the patterns of activity and rhythms and take note of that.

2. Draw from literary or cinematic inspiration

   1. Once you have found common themes in the activities you do and the rhythms you keep over the summer, see if you can find a book, movie, or concept that encompasses those patterns to provide a fun little aesthetic or theme to lean into for the summer! If you travel a lot, maybe your summer theme can draw inspiration from books like Around the World in 80 Days. If you find yourself at home more as a family, a Little Women summer might be your speed. The great thing about it is that you can make it YOURS, depending on which books, movies, or activities bring you and your children joy.

3. Embellish your current rhythms and activities with inspiration from your new theme

   1. Once you have a theme for your summer, you can find little ways to add flair to your activities. Forget trying to buy things or plan activities to have the “perfect” 90’s mom summer based on what you see online (that you and/or your kids may not enjoy) when you can instead make your own little trending summer theme.

The point is to have fun, be creative, take inspiration from what you can, and then make it your own!

How This Looks For My Family

While I was born in the nineties, I was 7 by the year 2000, so most of my summer memories, while probably still very 90’s-esque, actually occurred in the 2000s. And they were very magical! We did a lot of outdoor projects and play: chalk and basketball on the driveway, bubbles and pretend play outside, gardening, Blockbuster movie nights, public pool visits, and road trips.

While my family and I do some of those things naturally now, if I were to really try to lean into the full ’90s mom summer theme, my kids and I would be miserable.

It’s 90 degrees by 9 am where we are with 90% humidity. My girls inherited their father’s delicate, fair skin that no amount of sunscreen can protect from a burn, and no amount of bug spray can keep bugs away. My oldest literally just got over a staph infection on her ankle because she had so many bug bites that she scratched them and bacteria got in (which meant no pool or water submersion for 2 weeks). We don’t have a neighborhood pool. I get hot flashes just being in my house. Heck, even our dog has escaped out the front door only to do a lap and come running back in because it’s so hot! No kid wants to wear long sleeves just to go outside to play, and, honestly, by the time I lather everyone up with everything I need to go outside, no one wants to go anymore, and my arms are sore. We did all our nature-based outdoor activities in spring, so summer is more of a scavenger hunt for budget-friendly, air-conditioned activities at this point.

So what are we doing?

• Picnics! I love to turn our regular meals, like breakfast and lunch, into picnics with a YouTube ambiance video in the background; it makes staying inside way more fun and elevates the eating experience for my kids, encouraging them to eat. And can we forget Anne’s first picnic in Avonlea when she met Diana? That is one of my favorite parts of the book because it is so heartwarming!

• Pretend Play! As a mom of 2 girls, pretend play and dress-up are ever-present in my house lol (even pretend homeschool, as I am doing “trial homeschool” with my oldest; you can read more on that here). My oldest in particular has developed a wonderful imagination, so I try to encourage their dress up/tea parties/play cafe endeavors when possible. Pretend play has also encouraged independent play and the sisterly relationship between my daughters much more recently, so I am hoping they will be bosom friends forever and not just sisters haha. It reminds me of another favorite scene where Anne and the other Avonlea girls play “Elaine” and she drifts off in the canoe and has to be saved by Gilbert Blythe (the horror!).

• Pen and Paper everything! My girls may enjoy coloring, but their favorite activity is writing (well, the toddler scribbles, but it is VERY purposeful lol). My oldest has actually been helping me write my second children’s book and loves to steal my journals to write and illustrate her own stories, which she later retells to me. I don’t think there is anything more Anne-like than that! They also love to write notes and birthday cards, to the point that I even made them their own “mailboxes” to exchange them.

What’s Next

If you're feeling uninspired or scattered this summer because of boredom, busyness, or a lack of rhythm, I totally feel you. Or maybe you feel like you’re somehow failing because your summer as a mom feels less like the “playing outside with bubbles and chalk/catching fireflies/drinking from the hose" 90’s summer and more like the “endless cartoons and computer games and Cosmic brownies while waiting for your parents to get off work” kind of 90’s summer. If that is the case, I want to challenge you to draw inspiration from your own life and your family’s interests to create your own themed summer. Doing this for my family in this last week has been so helpful to me, as we had an extremely busy month, and all the plans I had for summer homeschool and my own personal curriculum have not gone as expected. Add to that the pressure I was putting on myself to have a present-and-perfect '90s mom summer, and I realized it was time for a creative reset. And from that, my Anne of Green Gables summer was born! If you do come up with your own theme to romanticize the rhythms of your current summer, please drop it in a comment or restack this and share it with me and others!

A Parting Word

One final word before we part, sweet friend. I want to firmly declare that I am not against the 90’s mom summer trend. In fact, out of everything that can be trending, I’m so glad that things like slow living/soft living/analog living/90’s nostalgia are what we see being popularized. Do you want to know why?

Because it is inspiring people to a slower, simpler way of life.

And I firmly believe that as people realize that the high-tech, fast-paced life that so many of us chased with promises to get more/do more/be more, they will see how empty that life is. But people can’t hear the echo of emptiness if things are moving too fast and loud in and around them.

But you know what? God often moves in the silence, in the stillness

How often has God talked to us but we were too distracted to hear?

Ps. 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God…”

Zech. 2:13: “Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”

1 Samuel 12:16: “Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes.”

See a theme here?

So, sure, there will be tons of people and companies capitalizing on the 90’s mom trend and turning it into something performative or product-based.

But God can use anything for His glory, including but not limited to a social media trend.

So if you are feeling judgmental of the trend or self-critical because of it, I encourage you to try to see it through this lens (and even have some fun with it!).

Take what works and leave the rest :)

Until next time, you beautiful kindred spirits!

Love,

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