4th of July Festivities

Our 4th of July was fun and very low key this year.

Muffin and I decided not to get out my boxes of patriotic decor since all of our things are spread out to the 4 winds (we have boxes of our various things at around 3 separate locations right now)!  Even though our house didn't look  like it was in the spirit to celebrate, we certainly were!

To kick off the weekend, Daniel decided to smoke some salmon and have a mini cookout at our apartment on Thursday night.  He always does such a good job and I will share his recipe later this week!  We then spent the rest of the evening floating in the pool and listening to music (lots of bluegrass, of course!)

Daniel's perfectly cooked salmon!

On Friday, we headed over to my parents house to spend the 4th of July on the pond!  My mom always knows how to decorate for a holiday and I'm so sad that I didn't get pictures of her amazing mantle!  One of my favorite things she had were chalkboard placemats!  I got to have my little kid moment and decorate them for her.  I only got a picture of my "nerdy" one that includes a history joke about Guy Fawkes Day (a british holiday you can read more about here that also includes fireworks).

I really need to get better with taking pictures of things!

 Other versions of my placemat art included a bomb pop (which who doesn't think of the 4th when they see a bomb pop?) and fireworks.  I love that you can change them up for any holiday or occasion and really have my eye on these for when our house is complete.

We spent a lot of time hanging out on a floating island on the pond.  That's right I said floating island!  Muffin and I first spotted our little floating paradise a few months ago at Sam's and knew that we needed to get it for the pond.  There's no better time to try something like this out than the 4th of July!

It took some time to figure out the best way to inflate it, and a shopvac in "reverse" mode worked well!  Once it was in the water, it was time to relax and enjoy our 4th of July and listen to some Old Crow Medicine Show!

In place and ready for floating!

A gorgeous lotus at my parent's house!

From there, we ate my Dad's delicious ribs and had mango margaritas!  It was a fun and relaxing holiday weekend!  

I can't wait to head back out to the pond for some more "island time" in the coming weeks!

Hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th!

-Katie

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