Fourth of July!

We had a GREAT Fourth of July!  We had a few friends a lot of family and a ton of good, hot Florida fun in the sun.  Of course, we had lot's of FOOD and DRINK.  Here's a few highlights:

My sister-in-law Crafty Florida Cowgirl made a colorful firecracker cake and Lauren McKinsey made cute pie pops and I made S'more bars and a fruity poundcake trifle. I experimented with some lemonade recipes and came up with this:

Blueberry Lemonade. YUM.

Here's the recipe courtesy of the Today Show. There are quite a few yummy sounding summery drink recipes on this page too. The blueberry lemonade was GREAT!  Especially since we always have frozen blueberries that we pick every year in the freezer.

This drink would be good for any summer party or barbecue. Give it a try!

We spent a lot of time cooking, eating, talking, laughing and then of course we did a lot of this:

Just letting go and jumping in!  What did you do at your Great Gathering?

Birthday and Fourth of July!

This last weekend was my mom's birthday. We had just been on vacation, so we had a rather small Great Gathering. But, I knew I wanted to make a spectacular cake for her. She requested strawberry, so I found a great recipe on All Recipes that had good reviews. I made a few alterations- like less sugar and it turned out great! 

All my thinking about strawberries and getting ready for the Fourth of July made me want to carry that red (Mom LOVES red), white and blue color as a theme for decorating the cake.

Here's what I came up with:

I used bunting from the fabulous Fourth of July collection over at Lauren McKinsey and I used FREE lettering bunting from The TomKat Studio. Of course, I already had the cute pinwheels and straws. But, you could work with whatever you have. Check it out!  Don't be afraid to combine ideas and concepts to make a final product look the way you want it to!  This would work GREAT for the Fourth of July. Here's my cake from our last Fourth of July party.

I think the one from this year is a step up!  But, I know the one from last year tasted GREAT and that matters, right?

So, this year we will be watching the fireworks from the pool at my parent's house and having a mini Great Gathering of course. :)  What are you doing?

Oh, and I bought these a long time ago, so I need to come up with a great drink to go with them!

What are you doing to celebrate this WONDERFUL country?