lightning bug: noun

Lampyridae is a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, and commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous crepuscular use of bioluminescence to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a "cold light", with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. This chemically produced light from the lower abdomen may be yellow, green, or pale-red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers.
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for me, especially as a kid,  lightning bugs = summer

Sometimes when I am inspired, it's like a vague swirl floating in my brain, and I'm not even sure how to act on it, but it just swirls and floats in my "creative" center until the right moment, when I go aha! That's what happened when I read BJ's post about using the Summer of Color Event where every week we are given an ice cream color prompt to use anyway we want basically.

This week we were given mint chocolate chip, now I just happen to love mint chocolate chip ice cream so I had planned on making a jar votive candle holder using that color prompt. A friend and I headed to the park where we painted jars various colors, yellow, pink and mint green. Then we came back to my place to get creative:

Wendy used wire to wrap around her jar, as hers will be hanging and then added some pretty ribbon, here she is hard at work:

Now, remember that swirling inspired thought in my head? Well, I had finished my mint chocolate chip jar and was contemplating the pink colors when it hit me...that aha moment! Wouldn't that pink jar look great in the sherbet colors? What if I made a jar each week from the ice cream color prompts!???! AHA! lol OK, so it was a little moment I had with myself but now I have 2 completed jars, one in mint chocolate chip and and the other one in sherbet colors!

Now while they look pretty in the day, I am looking forward to adding the candles to them and lighting them up tonight. I am also writing on the bottom of each jar the "name" of the ice cream:

Every night I have a lighting bug show outside my balcony. Because I live by a creek and the woods, I have tons of them. I wish I had a better camera to capture what I get to see each night, but now I have a little show of my own to add to their brilliant display!

entering this in PanPastel's challenge 323 Summertime

and a close up...should I cut out more on the pink one, it doesn't illuminate as well as the green one :(

and a picture of a fire fly all lit up in case anyone is not familiar with them:

( stock picture )

and when I was a kid we use to catch them and put them in jars like this:

( stock picture )

what brings back memories of summer in the back yard to me as a kid?

The sounds of a pulsating water sprinkler, catching fireflies, the smell of Southern magnolias and gardenias, a slice of watermelon and spitting seeds, playing kick the can until dark, standing under the neighbor's muscadine vine and eating them one after another with my mom....

to be a kid again...

how about you, got any favorite summer memories to share?
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As always, I hope that you Pinterest peeps out there are creating away, and I look forward to your linking up with Project Pinterest!