My Five Favorite Summer Essentials (The Ones I Couldn’t Make it Through the Season Without!)

Did you have a fun 4th of July weekend? My husband and I conquered a few house projects including some yard work, cleaning out the basement (seriously, THE biggest embarrassing mess), and finishing up painting the tile floor in our bathroom (I’m excited to show you how it looks!). And of course we also did our usual 4th of July weekend thing with a barbecue, fireworks, swimming and all of that good stuff. So fun – I love summer! If you’re a summer-lover too, I think you’ll enjoy today’s post because I’m sharing my favorite summer essentials – the ones that I couldn’t make it through the season without! And my friends Pam of Simple Details, Lisa of Shine Your Light, Jennifer of Dimples & Tangles, and our talented guest host, Mallory of Style Your Senses are joining me to share their favorites too!

Mallory and I have known each other through our blogs for years – I absolutely adore her style both in decorating and in fashion. It’s hard to pick a favorite room of her home but I’m totally in love with this room that she decorated for her sweet little girl – isn’t it the cutest? 

You can check out more pics of this room and tour the rest of Mallory’s home {here}. So glad you’re joining us today Mallory! Now let’s get going with my five favorite summer essentials (post includes some affiliate links – full disclosure statement available {here})  

My Summer Favorite… for Our Home

My hands-down favorite summer accessory for our home is a very simple one – vases to hold flowers from our yard. We have peonies blooming in the early summer which are followed by tons and tons of hydrangeas blooming for months afterward. They overtake our walkway if we let them so I’m constantly clipping them and filling up vases all over our house, including every bedroom:

This footed glass vase (available {here}) is my favorite and is what’s currently holding hydrangeas in my oldest daughter’s room (aren’t these blue hydrangeas the perfect match for her space?):

And of course if you’re a regular around my blog, you’ve seen this vase as a pair or singly many times before in my dining room including my recent Shades of Summer Home Tour where they held a bouquet of peonies: 

The other two vases that I use all the time are this oversized round glass vase that I scored at HomeGoods (mirror behind it is from {here}):

and this blue and white lidded ginger jar that I found at a thrift shop ({this lidded jar} is similar):

My Summer Favorite… for Our Patio

OK I’ve got to cheat a little bit on my patio favorites and share two faves instead of one because there are two things that I have on our patio every single time that we have guests over. One is a glass beverage dispenser – mine (found {here}) has an infuser that I fill with fruit and herbs. The combination of lemon and mint (which grows like crazy in our garden) is my favorite:

And it’s not something you need to limit to having out at parties – it’s great to set up in the backyard when your kids are playing outside too. 

My other patio essential is a pair of lanterns. A planter of flowers (I just snag one of my hanging baskets and clip off the hangers) flanked by two lanterns is a quick and simple outdoor table centerpiece that looks so pretty:

If the mosquitos come out once it starts to get towards dusk, adding citronella candles helps keep those suckers away. And for late night events when I want more lighting on the patio without the glare of my sconces, I take the hanging baskets off of the plant hooks flanking our patio doors and put my pair of lanterns there instead: 

The exact gold wire lanterns I have are no longer available but {these lanterns} look a lot like them! A few other things I use time and time again on our patio are garden stools, pillows, string lights, melamine plates, and galvanized tubs for icing beverages (click pics to shop):

My Summer Favorite… for the Beach

We live just 15 minutes from the beach so we end up hanging out there more than we do at pools most summers. I’ve got two favorite summer beach accessories that I bring every time – the first is a beach tent. It is the BEST for being able to stay out on the beach without getting fried by the sun. I’ll have to snap a pic of ours next time we’re at the beach but it’s very similar to {this highly rated beach tent} and {this slightly bigger version}. They both come with a carrying case and are super simple to set up – a total lifesaver! My other beach favorite is oversized towels because it drives me crazy when half of my body is hanging off the end of my beach towel. Boll & Branch recently sent me a set of their oversized towels and they’ve quickly become a new favorite – super large and super soft & plush!

And so cute too! You can check out all of their towel options {here}. A few of the other things that always make their way into my beach bag are a wide brim hat (mine isn’t the same as this one but it’s similar), shatterproof glass water bottle, and “After Sun” rescue balm that is the BEST for cooling and soothing your skin after you’ve been in the sun (click pics to shop):

My Summer Favorite… to Wear

My favorite summer outfit is one that I can comfortably run around in all day and then dress up with a simple change of shoes for dinner or drinks out:

The pants are {these wide leg crop pants} that come in a blue or gray stripe – super comfortable and they look great with simple flip flops for a casual look and strappy sandals when you want to be a little more dressy. I pair it with {this white tee shirt} that is like the unicorn of white tee shirts – my daughter and I shopped EVERYWHERE to find one that isn’t thin and see-through before stumbling upon this one and as a bonus, it’s super soft (we both ended up getting it!). I usually wear the outfit with {this cuff bracelet} which is one that goes with pretty much everything! Can you tell that I dress in the same comfy, casually elegant style that I decorate in? 🙂 

My Summer Favorite… to Eat

We’re ending on the best one – my favorite thing to eat in the summer! Isn’t eating great food a huge part of what summer is all about? My hands-down summer favorite is lobster rolls – not the kind with mayo (if that’s your favorite, we might not be able to be friends…) – I’m all about the melted butter! But if we’re talking about food we make at home (we haven’t yet attempted to make our own lobster rolls), homemade ice cream is where it’s at! Just this summer, I ordered {this ice cream maker} that’s under $50 and makes DELICIOUS ice cream. I’m a totally newbie to this ice cream making stuff but I’m wondering why the heck it took us so long to get one of these! I’m excited to experiment with different ice cream recipes – if you have a favorite, I’d love to hear about it!

And of course, I simply can’t leave out S’mores – love them! Last summer we got {these telescoping marshmallow roasting sticks} which are perfect for getting the job done without worrying about what animal might have peed on the stick you just grabbed out of the woods and put your marshmallow on (or is that just me…). 

And they telescope out and back in so are way easier to store than the really long ones. So there you have it – my five (plus a few extra) favorite summer essentials! I would absolutely love to hear about your summer favorites too – share away in the comments! And in case you want to be able to easily find this post later, I’ve gathered together my favorite summer home accessories I talked about in this post plus a few more and created a Pinnable image below (you’ll see it when you scroll down to the end of the post!) so be sure to Pin it for later!

Now it’s time to hop over and check out my friends’ summer favorites. These gals have seriously good taste so I can’t wait to read about the things that they couldn’t get through summer without! You can hop over and visit their posts here:

Pam – Simple Details

Jennifer – Dimples & Tangles

Lisa – Shine Your Light 

Mallory – Style Your Senses

If you missed any of my past posts from our My Five Favorites series, you can check out my five favorite paint colors {here} and a few of my other My Five Favorites posts here: