...so is this:
That is the sixth, and final, hat to be painted. When that one is done and dry, I can clear this table and begin to stock it with red, white and blue! Hopefully that will happen tomorrow! I truly can hardly contain myself because, once those sunflowers come out, I may begin to convince myself, even just a little, that the heat of summer will NOT last forever and there is light (full of leaves and pumpkins) at the end of the tunnel! Lol
In the meantime, I did celebrate summer yesterday-at least one of the better parts of summer-at daughter #3's house. We had a wonderful, laid back 4th of July and I was apparently so happy and laid back that I hardly took any pictures but I will share what I have.
Keeping it honest, we always seem to have to do lots of these in order to get even one decent shot for Nana! Kids!!
I feel like I took a bit of the easy way out this year but I truly wasn't sure how the holiday would play out-and, since I LOVE the traditional potato salad that I make and could eat the whole huge bowl myself...and, since I wasn't sure what I would be doing and how we would be celebrating...I decided to just pick up some potato salad and macaroni salad at Publix. That way, I wouldn't feel "compelled" to eat the homemade stuff after I put in so much work just in case we didn't end up grilling-does that even make sense? But, I did put together my homemade baked beans. If I do say so myself, they have any pre-made beans beat by a mile!
After my last epic cake fail, I was a bit leery about trying something else untested for anyone but, since this looked pretty fool proof...and very patriotic...I decided to give it a shot. And, I forgot to mention, no-bake, so no more oven involved.
It is called the Tunnel of Strawberry Cake and I found it on a blog I follow, "Confessions of a Plate Addict". It is basically a store bought angel food cake (although I'm sure a homemade one would be even more delicious), fresh strawberries, frozen strawberries, Jello and Cool Whip. It was pretty to look at whole...
...and I think even cooler when it was sliced. The directions were not very explicit so I went with what it said but I think if I make it again, I will flip the cake over before cutting the "trench". I think it will give me a wider base. Also, it called for frozen strawberries in the filling although she did say you could use fresh if you wanted. I will definitely use all fresh next time. When I took the cake out, my grand daughter asked if the icing was real whipped cream. Since I am not the biggest Cool Whip fan, I actually thought about the cream option myself. I think if I am serving it at my own home-so no transport time is necessary-I might try the whipped cream and just frost right before serving. I'm pretty sure the Cool Whip holds up better just for a time element.
But, all of that being said, it was yummy. The other thing that wasn't very clear was when you were putting the filling back into the trench. Mine was still VERY wet, so I used a slotted spoon and really just drained out the strawberries and cake bits. I was afraid the cake would turn to mush if I didn't and this option seemed to work perfectly and probably made the cake a little less sweet as a lot of the liquid Jello was still left in the bowl-not to mention that I'm also NOT the biggest fan of Jello! Sorry.
Jen always has lots for the kids to do on occasions like this because you never know how the weather will co-operate at a summertime event. We were lucky because we had enough sun throughout the day for the kids to swim and enough rain for us all to gather for a long game of Michigan rummy. Plus, the weather worked out perfectly for my son-in-law to get in all of his grilling plus a big churn full of homemade ice-cream.
The first thing Jen had was the roll of brown kraft paper for anyone who wanted to decorate a 4th of July runner. And then my son-in-law was smart enough to literally pick up a gallon of Elmers glue and a few other things so the kids could make slime to their hearts content. We had all kinds of 4th of July slime variations-wish I had pix.
As the evening was winding down, we headed out to the porch to do sparklers and were VERY pleasantly surprised by a really big and long fireworks display going on right for our viewing pleasure. Lol I was trying to watch, snap pictures of fireworks and pictures of sparklers all at the same time-talk about epic fails!
In any case, I am excited about what the next few days will bring. You can be sure I'll be back and this time I won't forget to take pictures!! Stay tuned.
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