At the end of each season, we take a look back and highlight our favorite posts. See previous Seasonal Bests here.

Summer flew by! Let me say here and now that this was the Summer of Kate.  She created SO many posts this summer and I’m eternally grateful for her hard work and dedication to Live Seasoned so if you enjoyed this summer, know that it was mostly brought to you by Katie. We love summer for so many reasons: the sun, the berries, the beach, our birthdays, we could go on and on. We even added an extra week, did you notice? We both agree that autumn is pretty awesome too.  The cool, crisp smell of the leaves in the air mixed with a cup of hot tea and every cliche fall activity we can think of, yep, that’s why autumn totally rocks.  Before we move on to fall, we wanted to take a look back at summer and highlight our favorite posts. If you had a fave we didn’t mention, we would love to hear in the comments!

Best of Dinners

• Katie’s pick : Roasted Lamb Shank with Fruit and Herbs. So, so good! 
  
• Sarah’s pick : If I could have my way, I would end each day with an enormous Pollinator Power Salad and a huge bowl of Lemon Ricotta Pasta.

Best of Desserts

• Katie’s pick : I think I’m still tickled by how perfectly the Pineapple Flowers fit the fourth anniversary gifts of fruit & flowers. Plus, they were so easy to make and looked beautiful. I’m exciting to have this little trick in my repertoire for future dessert decorating. 
  
• Sarah’s pick : I ate so many Lemon Bars that I became ill and I would do it tomorrow if I had them in front of me!

Best of Popsicles

• Katie’s pick : I have to admit that I loved the Blueberry Lemon Yogurt Popsicles because they were delicious, but also because I could give them to Alex at any time of day and not feel guilty about it!
  
• Sarah’s pick : You know it’s a good summer when we have a best of popsicles category.  I loved Katie’s Lemon Cream Popsicles.

Best of Drinks

•  Katie’s pick : Let’s just say that I have to make another batch of lemongrass simple syrup today to keep the Lemon Lemon Gin Fizz(es?) coming through the weekend.
• Sarah’s pick : I think my homemade lemonade post was technically in the spring, but I made lemonade more times than I can count this summer.

Best of Crafts

• Katie’s pick : Does it count that I love the moth watercolor from our Mad about Moths post? I would love to be able to paint like that.
• Sarah’s pick : I’m still in disbelief that you can print out an enormous photo for only ten bucks, which means the winner is Cheap Oversized Photo Art.

Best of Wedding Crafts

• Katie’s pick : I know it was only four years ago, but I really loved looking back through our wedding day through the DIY projects. While I loved making everything, my top project would have to be the bunting, because we still bring it out for special events like birthdays, including decorating the hospital room where Luc was born!
• Sarah’s pick : I loved looking back at Katie’s wedding and seeing all the details that made it so very special.  This was a hard decision for me, but because I still carry the Purse around (four years later) all the time I have to pick it as my favorite wedding project. Ps. I totally saw two other bridesmaids using their purses this summer too!

Best of Health & Beauty

• Katie’s pick : With our new high-altitude home and all of the time we spend outside, I’m so excited that I know how to make DIY Mineral-based Sunscreen. While it’s already great, I’m hoping that batch by batch I’ll customize the recipe to something that’s just right for our family. 
  
• Sarah’s pick : I use Katie’s Summer Face Oil every single day. I love the way it smells and feels and I love knowing my scientist of a sister concocted it on her own 🙂

Best How To

• Katie’s pick : Because we had just as much fun doing it as writing about it, I’m going with the Camping with Little Kids post.
  
• Sarah’s pick : Even though I don’t have kids, I loved Katie’s post Cooking with Kids.  I was surprised at how many great ideas she had (har har 😉 ) that pertained to cooking with little ones.
  

Best of Photography

• Katie’s pick : Since I’m always trying to capture our special and everyday moments on film file, I find myself referring to Sarah’s 5 Tips For Taking Better Kid Candids post again and again. 
  
• Sarah’s pick : It was a joy trying to photography Alex & Luc and I’m happy I could share some tips in How to: Photograph Young Siblings.

Best of Nature

• Katie’s pick : I liked writing the shark species spotlight, because it actually helped me to get over some of my fear of knowing that they were swimming so close to our summer stomping grounds! 
  
• Sarah’s pick : I love Katie’s new Species Spotlight feature and I’m totally partial to the Argiope aurantia aka cool yellow spider because in this case, the more you learn, the more you love.

Best of Travel

• Katie’s Pick : The beach! Maybe because we’re still here and living it :-).
• Sarah’s Pick : I loved revisiting Cannon Beach & Haystack Rock through photos.  It truly was one of the most amazing tidal pools I’ve ever seen.

Best Around the House

• Katie’s pick : While not exciting, and definitely not our typical type of post, I have to go with my post about Recovering Photos from LaCie RAID Drive because the end result was so valuable to me (saving over a decade worth of photos!) and because it feels so empowering to be able to do research and fix a software problem myself.
• Sarah’s pick : I loved writing Five Best Earth Friendly Products for an Outdoor Shower because it gave me a chance to research the companies that I use and love so much.  I found out so many interesting and inspiring facts while writing the post that I’m actually excited to buy more of their products.  I love feeling like an informed and responsible consumer, how dorky am I?

And that’s it, another summer in the books. We always think it goes by too fast, but that’s part of the reason why we blog. Having this record of the season helps to remind us that while we may not have had time for every adventure on our list, we still did a lot and had a fantastic time! We hope you did too. xo