I didn’t really plan on hosting a bbq on the 4th of July. The lawn hasn’t been mowed, I didn’t have a much food in the fridge, bbq’s out of propane, no decorations or fun things planned. But when some friends were all excited about getting together to celebrate, we pulled it together and bbq’d it up on the fourth of July.
Ideally, it would have been fun to make a red white and blue cake, make blueberry and strawberry daiquiris with pina coladas, hang up streamers, paint an American flag beer pong table on plywood, and set up water games for the kids. Or at least have the grass cut. But between a trip to the grocery store for tri tip and beers, and getting the propane tank refilled, the house needing tidying and lots of cooking to be done. So no time for ambitious decorating projects.
I was able to throw together some decorations inside the house on the chalkboard and with a white paint pen on the mirror and door window. The eagles are both drawn from Ed Emberley books. Remember those? I loved to draw when I was a kid, and I had a couple of these. I was so cool I would skip most of the steps and just draw the last frame. #notcoolatall My kids are really into the Ed Emberley books and get them all the time from the library. So often I have to limit them to three each trip.
I was excited, however, to get to use our new outdoor table to its full capacity, and try out our fancy new chairs. All are from Ikea, and the chairs are aluminum, which I love. Between these eight chairs and our chaise lounge chairs, we only had to bring in a couple chairs from the house to fit everybody. Not too bad, everyone had a place to sit, but I did run out of steak knives. Before we entertain outside next time I’ll have to pick up some steak knives and maybe some more large plates. I hate to have paper plates, and I’ve seen people use mix matched thrift store plates at outdoor parties, sometimes even super cute vintage sets, but I like a big stack of white plates I can use anytime. Unless I found a couple dozen coordinating plates at a thrift store, it’ll be a box full of plates from Tar-zhey.
The food on this table was just the stuff I made. Tri tip steaks, chicken wings, deviled eggs, onion dip with vegetables and potato chips, olives, tortilla chips with salsa and cheese dip. Beers, berry daiquiris and sodas. I thought we were pretty well covered as far as food goes. Our guests ended up bringing a huge spread by themselves, agua fresca, macaroni and potato salad, herb corn, rib eye steaks, carrot cake cupcakes, chocolate cake, more beer, and we had to grab the little table the little kids were going to sit at to put more dishes on. We were all very full.
My poor poor children had never before played with sparklers, they had been deprived of the magic of fireworks. They made up for lost time and were overjoyed to play with sparklers, going through 20 boxes. We followed that up with one larger firework in the backyard, then the city show as seen from the junior high field by our house. It was a successful night for us all. Especially since there was just enough chocolate cake for the husband and I to each have a small slice of leftover chocolate cake before bed.
