Three Cheers....

...for the red, white & blue! Hope your 4th of July weekend was filled with Fellowship, Food, Fun & thankfulness for our Freedom. Since this blog hasn't been gettin' much love lately, I thought I give you a big weekend scoop, starting with....

The Crafts
The creative juices were needing an outlet so I made some little themed decorations. The first two are courtesy of Martha Stewart:

::garland of ribbon stars::

::a close-up::

::striped sand candle holder::

::practicing my face-painting skills::

I also made these {alas, no photo} and stuck them into a few of the little jars that were too full of sand for votives. {I knew those used baby food jars would come in handy for something!} Now if only I can store them carefully so as not to muddle up the sand for next year! It helps if you use a funnel to pour the sand into to get somewhat evenish layers. I think the unevenness does add a bit of charm though. As for the ribbon stars, If I would've had more time, I would've printed out some little sayings to go in the middle of the larger ones. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the little stars have two punched out hearts in the middle of each one. The face-paints {$2.99 at Hobby Lobby} were definitely the hit of the weekend with the kiddos. I would paint something different on their faces each day. So far I've done hearts, patriotic stars, a patriotic butterfly, swirls, and a shooting star with a rainbow coming out of it. The only thing I didn't like about the purchased paints was that they got really cracked on the child's face after awhile. Hubby looked up some recipes on-line to make some face paints, but I didn't have enough time to purchase one ingredient I would need {cold cream}. I figured I could pre-mix the colors & store them in those 7-day pill boxes. Sometime I will try this recipe! Great for birthday parties, ya think?

The Plans
We began the weekend on Thursday, kicking it off with the end of the week Showcase for Tatiana's CYT Summer Camp. What fun! She had an amazing time & I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this program to someone else. We had my dad & step-mom here as weekend guests, and they arrived as we came home from the Showcase. We had A LOT of food this weekend. I will need to step-up the exercise plan this week to make up for it! Shrimp, Ribeye steaks, Asian Coleslaw, Baked Beans, Homemade Onion dip & more. YUM-O. Somehow in the midst of all this entertaining, I somehow managed to make 5 meals for the freezer too.

Friday brought more entertaining as we enjoyed the company of hubby's sister, her boyfriend, and my niece, who joined us for a BIG cook-out, a local fireworks show, and spent the night as well. That is the most people I have ever had sleeping in my house on one night: 10!! We were all comfortable, with plenty of room to spare. Yesterday, we went to a cook-out at my mom's house, along with my brother&wife and my step-brother&wife. MORE FOOD, ya'll. We played a bit of ladderball there. Never played before, but I rocked it, winning the match for hubby & I.

The Aftermath
Today, our weekend guests headed home. Hubby drove to Chicago to get a lawn mower from my dad for free, since ours conked out. He took the girls & decided to leave them for a sleep-over at his parents' house. This will help with the cleaning up, but only a little, as my Spud seems to be teething. {Poor guy!} Our DishNetwork dish is on the fritz, so hubby is working on moving that around, since now there is a tree blocking its view. DUH. You would think those DishNetwork guys would notice the smallish tree there next to the dish & somehow realize that the tree ain't always gonna be that size. Nope. But I digress. To me, the worst part of entertaining, is the clean-up. Yuk. I've always that a party clean-up business would make big bucks and today I'm reminded why.

At least I have a house to clean, a baby to care for, and freedom to do most of the things I love. So there's the scoop :>)