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A Red and White Celebration

In honor of Smart & Final's 140th Birthday I threw together a little celebration.  I'm honored to be one of the #sfsmarties and love Smart & Final, particularly for when I'm hosting parties.  You can view some of the items we purchased for this party table on ThisMoment.

On The Party Table:

Red Velvet Cake - filled with freshly whipped cream and topped with sifted powdered sugar

Twizzlers

Milk (First Street) - Red Straws (First Street) and Party Cups

Yogurt covered raisins

Starlight Peppermints (First Street)

Red Velvet Cookies

Apple and Cheese Danish Bites

Strawberries

Kettle Corn

TIPS:

To decorate I hung a rope above the table and lay folded napkins over the top to form a banner and placed a matching table cloth on the table.  These were from the twins 3rd birthday party.

Glass hurricane candle holders are fabulous for holding party snacks such as fruit and kettle corn.

Small trays can be turned into an instant cake stand by placing it on top of a candlestick holder.

Silicone baking cups are perfect for holding small snacks such as yogurt covered raisins.

When using a boxed cake mix, use apple sauce in place of oil - This tip is from Martha Stewart.

 

Disclosure: This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #cbias #SmartFinal140th 

A Patriotic Parfait

Ingredients:

• Blueberries
• Raspberries
• Vanilla yogurt
• Cool Whip (defrosted)
• Granola
• Flaked Coconut

Whisk equal parts yogurt and cool whip in a bowl.

Layer your fruit and yogurt mixture in a glass.  Top with granola and flaked coconut.

Enjoy!

A Flag Cake

Between Memorial Day and the 4th of July, TASTE OF HOME have partnered with the USO to raise money for the troops overseas to call their loved ones back home.  For every unique visitor to the Taste of Home Flag Cake Recipe, 10 cents will be donated.

Being a military wife, and a lover of cake, I had to get on board to get the word out about this fantastic campaign.  And yes, of course I just had to make the cake. Here are a few tidbits of information.

• Taste of Home will be donating 10¢ per (unique) click, which equals 2 minutes of talk time for service members
• Every $1 raised will provide 20 minutes of talk time for service members and their families
• Taste of Home will be donating up to $100,000 to the USO for this initiative
• The initiative will run through July 4^th, Independence Day

Now head on over to TASTE OF HOME and view their Flag Cake recipe.  Every click helps.

USMC Family Picnic

I am a member of the Marine Officers' Spouses' Club for the area where I live.  We regularly host events for the wives.  Yesterday we hosted a picnic for the Marine Corps families.  We had such a fantastic turn-out.  We held it in a great space that has a large lawn area, a sand volleyball court and a large shaded area with Roman style columns.

We planned a lot of activities for the kids: 2 bounce houses, a ping pong table, arts & crafts station, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, balls, and we turned the sand volleyball court into a giant sandpit. 

It was a potluck lunch, however we provided the sandwiches (giant subs) and beverages.

Here are a few photographs from the event:

The cupcakes I made. 

The flags were made by printing sheets of mini flags with a 5mm gap between two flags and using an Elmer's glue stick to attach them around a lollipop stick.

I put together an arts and crafts area for the kids.

The activities they could do were:

Necklaces:

I dyed pasta in blue and red (the theme of the day) and yellow and red (the colors of the USMC flag).   White rexlace was pre-cut and knotted at one end prior to the event to make it easier for little ones to start threading pasta immediately. For instructions on how to dye pasta see here.  

Coloring pages:

I found various free coloring pages on the internet that were California, military and USMC themed.  Crayons were put on the work table for the kids to use which were placed into jam jars and tied with red ric rac.

Party Hats:

I used this tutorial from Martha Stewart to make the paper hats from regular poster board.  I attached blue and red ribbons to the sides of each hat and put out various items for the kids to decorate them: feathers, pom poms, felt stickers, butterfly and heart gems, foam letters, streamers, markers, crayons and rub-ons.  To stick the feathers, pom poms, streamers, and gems onto the hats I put out sheets of Glue Dots, which meant a lot less mess on the activity table - the Glue Dots were provided as part of Twittermoms Summer Bonding Campaign . 

Tip:  After searching at various locations for poster board Target came up the cheapest at only 39 cents a sheet as opposed to 89 cents or 99 cents, or even higher at other places.

Greeting cards:

Blank cards and matching envelopes were put on the table for the kids to decorate using any of the items provided (listed above for the hats).

Face plates:

Paper plates were turned upside down and the kids got creative and made faces on them either by attaching the dyed pasta or hand-drawing and then attaching streamers around the rim.

Support ribbons:

Yellow foam support ribbons were decorated with the various foam letters and pictures that were provided.

Don't the subs in the photograph above look amazing.  They tasted even better. We purchased them from Campagno's Maket & Deli.  And this was only half of them. 

For our 'information and name tag table's I used salsa jars, filled them with sand and placed American and USMC flags in them and tied them with the same red ric rac as the crayon jars.

I loved these red and white checked table cloths too.  I picked up bags and bags of them in the $1 section at Target ages ago to put in storage for an upcoming party I'm planning, but thought they would be perfect to give our tables a 'picnic' feel.  They are wipe-clean, so perfect for me to re-use.

Here are a few photos of my little ones enjoying the event:

* Disclosure:  “I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Glue Dots blogging contest to be eligible to receive a $30 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.”

Please join the Glue Dots Facebook fan page

This post linked to:

4th of July Celebration

A belated 4th of July post.  Better late than never, right!

We celebrated with friends. It was chaotic but fun.  Picture 3 toddlers and 4 Boxers (as in the dog variety) in the one spot. Together.  For about 4 hours.

The food was fabulous and the company even more so though.

Here's a little round-up of the festive food I made yesterday:

Clockwise:

Blueberry Muffins: fresh out of the oven for breakfast.

Vanilla Mousse Cups: Chocolate cups with French vanilla mousse piped into them and topped with a red velvet cake star and white cake sparkles.  Note: the red velvet stars were made from the excess cake cut off the Star Pops before they were decorated (details below).  I rolled the pieces to flatten them, then used a small star-shaped fondant cutter to cut out the stars.

Firework Fairy Bread:  As most of you who read me regularly know, fairy bread is a traditional party treat  (in Australia) for children (and me). For these I used a star-shaped cookie cutter.

Annie's Fruit Salsa & Cinnamon Chips: The recipe for this is one I've used a few times from One More Moore, each time I amend it just a little to suit the party though.  This time being the 4th of July, I used the following - raspberries, blueberries, Asian pears, and pomegranate seeds with a mixed berry preserve.  The cinnamon chips were made using whole wheat pita bread.

Cherries:  I think these speak for themselves.

Star Pops: Red velvet cake stars, covered in buttercream frosting and patriotic sprinkles and placed on popsicle sticks.

Have I mentioned that I cannot wait for my new camera to arrive so I can get back to taking lovely photographs.

Patriotic Star Cupcakes

All you need to make these bite-sized star-shaped cupcakes is:

• Star shaped cupcake pan - this is the one I used.
• Star shaped cookie cutters (2 sizes) - again I used these by Wilton.
• Fondant (colored in red, white & blue)
• Buttercream frosting (for attaching the stars to the cakes)

This post linked to:

4TH OF JULY SWEETHEARTS

I was recently sent quite a few boxes of Sweethearts.  But not just any Sweethearts.  The new Red, White & You Sweethearts. 

This new line of Sweethearts launched just in time for 4th of July and are to honor America’s troops and celebrate America’s patriotism.

I couldn’t just eat all of the candy that was sent to me.   Instead my task was to share some creative ways you could use Sweethearts, not just for 4th of July, but year-round.

So this is my first idea … I will be back with more over the next couple of days.

Sweethearts Candy

These are super easy to make. 

Ingredients:

• Candy mold
• Candy melts (red, white & blue)
• Sweethearts - Red, White & You
• Vanilla icing

To make:

Follow the directions on the candy mold for making the candies … which is very easy, basically you melt the candy, pour into the mold and set in the refrigerator.

Once set, add a little bit of icing to the top and pop on a Sweetheart.

P.S.  The candy melts and candy mold were purchased from Michael’s.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the company for supporting the troops.  They have teamed up with the USO (United Service Organizations) to send the Red, White & You Sweethearts in care packages to American troops, both here in the U.S. and overseas.  As a military wife, I’m all for promoting companies who support the troops.

*Disclaimer: Sweethearts were provided by Necco.