Hello friends and welcome to a fun “Summer Nights” themed blog hop hosted by my friend Cecilia of My Thrift Store Addiction. I am excited to be joining five blogging friends for this fun hop as we share creative ways to celebrate summer nights.

If you are coming over from At Home With Jemma or if you just happened to stop by today, I am so glad to have you here! I can’t wait to try Jemma’s recipe. Today I am am going to be sharing how I brighten up my summer nights with candles, lanterns, torches, and solar lights.

Hot Summer Nights

Most of my summer days are spent in the garden if it isn’t too hot, while evenings and nights are for relaxing, dreaming, and planning for the next day in the garden! If it is really hot and muggy outside in the evening, I choose to stay inside until it cools off a bit. I like to light allergy-friendly beeswax votives or a pillar candle in a lantern to create a relaxing ambiance while getting lost in some of my favorite decorating and gardening books.

Aren’t lanterns just so pretty indoors and out for summer? Don’t miss my post, Simple Summer Lantern Decor for some beautiful ideas for decorating with summer lanterns.

On summer nights when it is too hot to sit outside I also like to relax by playing piano or guitar in the music room. By the time June arrives I am already dreaming of the sea and looking forward to our annual beach vacation in mid-July. In the summer I usually decorate my music room with vintage beach-themed vignettes, so summer nights spent in this room are a bit like an imagined getaway to the future beach cottage of my dreams.

Perfect Summer Nights

On those perfect summer nights when the weather is just right, my husband and I enjoy sitting out on our side patio where we are surrounded by pretty flowers and landscaping. The citronella lantern torches are always burning, not only to keep the critters away, but for the relaxing ambiance they create. We often have a fire in the fire pit on the patio (I forgot to get a picture of our fire pit, but I will try to slip one in later today and update this post.)

I do use the term “relaxing” lightly when it comes to summer nights spent on the patio. There is often enough light to mess around in the flower beds until very late, so many evenings I will sort of be wandering around the yard checking on my plants, then I will come and sit back down to chat with my husband. Back and forth I go until it becomes too dark to see in the garden, then I finally relax  late on into the night by the fire until it burns low.

Even though we live in the city, our neighborhood is actually positioned in the middle of a forest. As a result the summer nights are very quiet and dark here. The front and side of our home is brightly lit with solar lights that are hard to photograph, but very beautiful in reality.

Almost every summer night I will take a late stroll around the landscape to enjoy the interesting way the solar lights play on the plants and garden ornaments and the shadows they cast.

Back in the winter I received two “Classic Version” solar landscape spotlight style lights for review from Litom, the creators of the first ever waterpoof solar wall lights. I absolutley love these solar lights! They are extremely sturdy and provide quite a bit of extra light in addition to our other solar lanterns which have a warmer glow. The solar spotlight you see here with the cool white light is strong enough to light up the whole corner of our house. 

The spotlights have been so useful in illuminating dark areas around the sidewalk where it was previously hard to see. 

We have had the solar spotlights in place since January and they have held up great against all the rain, snow, sleet and hail of winter and spring. If you are looking for durable solar lights to brighten up your summer nights, then I encourage you to check out the Litcom website or Litcom on Facebook.

Rainy Summer Nights

Rainy summer nights are almost always spent on our front porch. During a rainstorm we especially love the views up into the forest aross our street. We have several citronella lanterns that do a great job keeping bugs at bay and creating just the perfect lighting on magical, rainy summer nights.

Tonight as I was finishing up this post it just happened to turn out to be one of those wonderful, rainy summer nights! I certainly do hope the rain stops tomorrow however…my good friend is having a “safe” yard sale (complete with social distancing guidelines) and I always score great vintage treasures at her sales! Now I am off to spend this summer night dreaming of some good junkin’ finds at my first yard sale of summer!

I hope you have enjoyed seeing how I brighten up my summer nights with lanterns, candles, torches and solar lights. If you missed any of the other inspiring posts on the hop, you can check them out via the links below:

My Thrift Store Addiction | Calypso in the Country| The Crowned Goat

The Tattered Pew | At Home with Jemma| Follow the Yellow Brick Home

How do you brighten up your summer nights? I love hearing from you, dear readers!

Thanks for visiting!

Amber

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