Red, White, and Blue...and a Surprise!

Did you have a wonderful 4th of July weekend?

I know we did. It was full - to the maximum amount of fullness - of excitement, holiday fun-ness, busy-ness, sweaty-ness, windy-ness, sleepless-ness, and so much more. I'll make an attempt at unpacking all of the above throughout this week, but I'm gonna start with a little blurp today regarding the holiday fun-ness and excitement factors.

4th of July was mucho fun! The weather was great (sunny, 80 degrees). We had a relaxing day off of work (love the "holiday" excuse to not do anything - including house work). We had friends over for a dinner and laughed a lot and went down by Lake Michigan to watch the fireworks. Then we collapsed into bed cherishing what a great 3-day weekend it truly was.

I'll admit that I didn't take many photos of our 4th of July celebration. The day just got away from me. I remembered (at the very last minute) that we should probably have a red, white, and blue theme for our cook-out (duh). So, I threw a blue table cloth down on the table, ran to the store to pick up a few food items and picked up a bouquet of flowers at the same time ...


My friend, Chelsea, brought some lovely flag-designed napkins to fit the theme...


And then I made dessert that fit right in with the color scheme...


I had seen a ton of pictures on Pinterest over the past week that inspired me to use a trifle bowl for full color impact. So, I copied the ideas seen online and simply layered chunks of angel food cake, cool whip, strawberries, and blueberries in the trifle bowl (some people used vanilla pudding too).

I attempted to make sure the edges - where the fruit would show through the bowl - were well lined and pretty, but that didn't really happen as the cool whip got messy. In the end it was still yummy, and a light, fruity dessert was a nice way to finish off the main course.


As I mentioned above, the fireworks were lovely. A little short, but lovely.



But here was the real excitement (and surprise) of the weekend ... my 3-years-younger-than-me sister, Rachel, gave birth to a baby girl, Olivia Laine on July 3rd. She's the first grandbaby on either side of her family. It was crazy exciting. I'm in love with my niece and can't wait to see her in a few weeks when I head south to Georgia!


I adore her already, and I give you permission to adore her too!

So, a huge congrats to Rachel and Jordan on the birth of their daughter. We love you! (But we love Olivia more. Just kidding. Not really.)



More on our weekend tomorrow, but tell me, how was your 4th of July? What'd you do? Spill the beans!