First Day of Summer, 2016

     The first day of summer has been my favorite time of year for the past couple of years.  I think that's because it's cloudy and cool here in the Seattle area so many days of the year, and summer signals the start of clearer skies and warmer days to come.  Ripening fruit is so delicious and abundant this time of year, and being able to take the kids to the park after dinner while it's still sunny is nice.  Yesterday I switched out my decorations once more, and here they are!

Fruit dishes!  This is my favorite seasonal set of the four I bought last year.

Sea shell shower curtain (say that quickly five times).  ;)

The baking pan thing.  Each of these bugs is pretty big, bigger than your standard cupcake.

 Here's the recipe that came with them, called Rainbow Bugs.  The buttercream frosting at the store has hydrogenated oil in it which is absolutely terrible for your body, so I suggest making the buttercream frosting from this recipe.  This frosting recipe calls for 1/2 cup of shortening, which you should never use because shortening is almost completely hydrogenated oil, but you can substitute in 1/2 cup of butter instead and the recipe will work just fine.
(Update: I've tried the frosting, and this recipe for buttercream frosting is too sweet, it tastes too much like the powdered sugar.  I've looked up other recipes for buttercream frosting, and while I don't know how to perfect this one yet, at the very least you should use only 3 cups of powdered sugar instead of 4).

I was on top of things this time and I made the bug cakes for dessert last night (Little One snagged the second ladybug before I could take the picture).  They taste pretty good.  Next time I will try it with the buttercream frosting and maybe some mashed-up fruit for coloring.  We'll see.

A year or two ago I bought some kids' books that talk about the first day of the new seasons, and I read the summer book to the kids last night before bed.  Baby Girl was too young to understand it last year but this year she understood a lot more and she really liked it.  Little One is still too young to understand all the words, but he still showed interest which is great.  I love that my kids love books.

We've also had some interesting flowers growing in our yard.  Those white ones are lilies, and the blue ones (I just found out after much Google searching) are commonly called Mountain Hydrangea.  They're pretty, and I'm glad the previous owners planted such lovely bushes.  They've been nice to look at over the past few weeks.

Here's a close-up.

     Yesterday was also Little One's last day of school for the year.  He has made such great progress with verbal communication and I've loved watching him learn and more recently use longer full sentences here and there.  Baby Girl has almost finished the kindergarten workbook that she and I have been working on this year, and we'll finish that up this week.  She'll be more than ready for kindergarten next school year, and Little One is right on track to continue with his school next year.

I love summer, and I'm planning to enjoy these next few months.