summer in review {2023}

Hey, friends!

I’m so excited to share with you a few of the many things that happened this summer. I feel like this summer I really pushed myself out of my comfort zone in a lot of areas – like launching my business and doing photoshoots for people – but I also had a lot of fun like on our trips to Lake Michigan and up north, church camp, doing things with friends, and even summer training runs which definitely paid off now that xc started! Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading about summer!

Memorized 1 Corinthians 13. and did a lot of Bible journaling! Our church memorized 1 Corinthians 13 together this summer, and since I already had it memorized but I hadn’t reviewed it for a while, it was a good time to brush up on my scripture memory! I also did a lot of Bible journaling and I’m happy with how most of my spreads turned out!

Grew my blog. I feel like blogging was harder for me than it has been before, but I still love it and the work has definitely paid off. I’m almost at 270 subscribers and I am so thankful for all of you who are here! 🥰 If you enjoy my blog, I would be honored if you would share my blog with anyone else who you think would like it.

Had a garden. Our garden really took off this year and we ended up with tons of tomatoes, peas, peppers, cucumber, lettuce, zucchini, and lettuce. We also have pumpkins, gourds, corn, melon, and squash that are still growing! My mom also grew plenty of lovely flowers and I had a lot of fun picking bouquets of wildflowers for the house this year!

Launched my business and babysat a lot! At the end of June, I launched my website design business, Daisies & Design Co. and God has been so gracious and truly blessed my business this summer! So far, I’ve designed two websites (which is the most I could handle.) but I have two other clients lined up and I’m so thankful! I also babysat a lot this summer, which was great 95% of the time! If you’re interested in a website design, go claim your booking because as I mentioned, I’m booking up fast for this fall! I’m also working on another part of Daisies & Design Co. which you should here about within the next few weeks!

Swimming with my cousins! My grandma has a good-sized pool that everyone is welcome to use whenever and we definitely enjoyed it this summer! (My cousin and I went swimming at night and there were bats everywhere. Eww. For your sanity, I would recommend not swimming at night in an outdoor pool with your cousin who is just as terrified of bats as you are. We went outside with towels on our heads and umbrellas because we forgot to turn off the lights around the pool. Let me note that originally, we were terrified to get out of the pool because of the bats and hid under the pool cover most of the time, until we finally convinced ourselves to get out. Not a pleasant experience and I’m not doing it ever again.)

So many friends! From going out for coffee/tea, bonfires, hanging out at my house, swimming at night, wild ranger & golf card rides, going out to Culvers after youth group, and going to Walmart (Yes, that’s normal when you live in a town with pretty much zero to do. I said that it was surprisingly fun and my friend’s mom’s response was “Yeah, teenagers have been wandering around Walmart since Ephesus.”), this summer was amazing for doing things with friends!

Summer running. One of my highlights but also one of the things I hated most of all. That’s how I feel about running most of the time though, so it’s normal, haha. But I got a little more than 60 miles in this summer which is way more than last year, and cross country so far has gone pretty well. First meet is Saturday (aka tomorrow 😅), so we’ll see how I feel after that!

My birthday! I wrote a whole post about it so I won’t go into much detail but it was amazing and you can read the post here.

Church camp, joined our high-school youth group, and other fun events! Youth group was definitely a highlight of my summer, and even though we didn’t do as many events as we usually do, the selfie scavenger hunt we did and church day camp (where I managed to get my legs covered in tie-dye by one of the littles, haha.) was so fun.

Grew in my portrait photography skills and did a lot of photoshoots. In July, one of my besties who’s graduating next year asked me to do her senior photos and it was so much fun and her pictures turned out beautifully! Later, a couple in our church asked me to take some photos for them, and then I did senior photos for one of my brother’s friends. I’m also doing senior photos for three more people this fall and I’m second shooting a wedding this fall, plus maybe for my cousin next year so I’m pretty excited! I would say that I’ve learned a lot about posing and taking portraits and more this summer which is amazinG!

Went on two vacations. In June, we went to Lake Michigan for a week and it was a lovely time with my family. And then two weeks ago, we went up north and stayed on a small lake in my mom’s cousin’s lake house. It was so much fun! We did a lot of kayaking, swimming, playing cards, boating, tubing, and it was a very refreshing break.

Read a lot of books! I got through almost the whole list of my spring-summer reading list that I posted here in March! My favorites were The Vanderbeekers by Karina Yan Glaser, Roll by Darcy Miller, Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery, and Caterpillar Summer by Gillian McDunn. If you want to keep up with what I’m reading, check out my Goodreads! I’m looking forward to all the books I’m going to read this fall!

now, it’s your turn!

How was your summer? What did you do? Did you read any new books or did anything incredibly fun? Share something that happened to you or something you did this summer in the comments!!