Summer Birthday Barbecue!

Happy Monday!

How was your weekend? Our Saturday was busy, but in a good way. Let me fill you in...

My husband turned 40 earlier this spring, but we wanted to wait to do a party outside. The date was set & the guests were invited! 

The party date arrived. It was raining. Boo! 

We prayed over the weather & got to our party preparations anyway.

The menu was simple - we provided the hot dogs & burgers & we asked our friends to bring the side dishes. I just love a pot luck! Everyone makes their favourite dishes & it takes so much pressure off of the host family!

As I said, we had the party outside, so I wanted to add a bit of colour to our green backyard. :)

The rain stopped a couple of hours before the party started (ours prayers worked!), so we were able to get things "prettied up" in plenty of time.

Some lanterns with brightly coloured candles, paper lanterns, Off! bug lanterns (which work really well, by the way), my chevron tablecloth from HomeSense, topped with a vintage wire basket for napkins & paper plates, & some bright turquoise buckets held the plastic utensils. I brought out my yellow vintage step stool & we set up a drink station with it. 

The guests arrived & we had a wonderful meal with them. I didn't make the same mistake this year that I did last year: making blended drinks for our guests that had me running the blender all night! 

I made plenty of fruity iced tea (a berry blend from Steeped Tea), combined it with frozen lemonade concentrate & some Sprite to add a bit of fizz. It was a great punch that was easy to throw together as the night went on. I was actually able to sit & visit with friends instead of being in the kitchen all night! It also helped that my friend, Krysta, took on dishwashing duty towards the end of the party & cleaned up all the leftover food as well! Thanks, Krys! 

Instead of a birthday cake, I put together some of my sweet husband's favourite flavours - chocolate & peanut butter - & made a summer friendly (no turning on the stove!) trifle! Recipe coming soon - stay tuned!

It was a great party & my husband's 40th birthday was definitely celebrated in style! 

Thanks to all our friends for coming & celebrating with us!

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Enjoy your day!

Check out the great parties I link up to!

Insta-Friday #23, #24, #25

Another week of telling you the stories behind my Instagram photos! Three week's worth, this time! You may want to grab a coffee... ;)

Once our peonies started blooming it rained for days which means we didn't get a whole lot of time to enjoy them. In between the rain showers, I managed to get this shot.

After all the rain, the plants (and the weeds!) were growing profusely! And weeding was a super muddy job!

Insta-Friday #21

School's out for the summer!!

Woot, woot! We're all really excited around here. 

We have all kinds of fun plans, most of them to take place around here since we're not venturing away from home for very long this summer.

Today was supposed to kick off our 3rd annual park tour (simple idea, but really fun: visiting a different park every week, preferably one that we've never played at before), but it's pouring rain here so that plan will have to wait until the gloomy weather clears up. 

Instead, we'll do some reading, play some games, & maybe bake some cookies.

~~~~~

On to the look at our week via Instagram...

Last Friday consisted of a lot of shopping - groceries, plus a whole bunch of gifts for birthdays, teachers, & Father's Day.

Here's where I ended up for the Father's Day gifts...

I'd never been in by myself. I was a little overwhelmed, but I think I picked out some great gifts.

On Friday night we went out for supper with some good friends. The very fun, laughter-filled evening was topped off by peanut butter pie (which was amazing!).

Pink Lemonade Cookies

Ahhh... Summer...

Sunshine.

Swimming in the pool.

Vacations.

Lemonade stands.

Did you ever have a lemonade stand as a kid? 

I did. We weren't very successful as we lived on a q-u-i-e-t street in a small town. Plus, we probably drank all the lemonade. That can't help, right?

Maybe if we had made some of these cookies to sell along with our lemonade, we would have had more success! ☺

Insta-Friday #18, #19, & #20 (The late edition!)

Welcome to Insta-Friday... the late edition! 

It's been a few weeks since I've done one of these posts, so I have alot of photos to share.

Let's dive in!

Spring has brought such amazing weather here & I've been going on lots of walks to take advantage of it.

Splash Layout {Echo Park}

  I'm almost finished showing you the pages I've done so far from our summer holiday. Which means... I have many more to get to! I will have to put the scrapbooking aside for a bit, though, while I get ready for the craft fair I have a table at in November. 

  These photos were taken in Oceanside, CA in August. After a hot day at Legoland, my mom-in-law, my daughter, & I took a walk down to the beach. It felt so nice to put our feet in the ocean!

Products used:

• Cardstock: American Crafts
• Patterned paper, stickers, tags - Echo Park
• Felt accents - Pebbles
• Badge - American Crafts

Thanks for reading! Have a good one!

Summer Days Layout {Echo Park}

  Have I told you how much I enjoy scrapbooking with collections? It makes things so much easier & faster! It's almost fool proof. Everything goes together... it just takes out the guess work. Faster is not always better, but when you have hundreds of vacation photos that you want to scrapbook, faster is pretty much always better. :)

These photos are of my sis-in-law & my kiddos on King Triton's Carousel in California Adventure.

Products used:

• Cardstock - Colorbok (purple), Bazill Basics (white), & Bo Bunny (green polka dot)
• All other products - Echo Park, Summer Days collection

One more layout added to our vacation scrapbook. :)

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subscribe by email (sign up on the right sidebar), or follow along on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 

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Enjoy your day!

Zion National Park Layout {Basic Grey}

  For those of you with kids in school, does that mean quieter days or much busier days? In our house it's a combination of both. When the kids are gone, I get my housework finished faster, but school also means a lot of driving for me. Oh well, it's certainly nice to be getting back into a routine & enjoying this new season that's just begun.

  I'm steadily getting some layouts of our trip finished as well as cards made for our church's Fall Festival & another order. 

  Here's one I did of our whirlwind tour of Zion National Park, Utah. We were driving through a nearby town & stopped at a little bakery for lunch. We were chatting with the owner & she said we had to go visit Zion National Park since we were so close. We had the time that day, so off we went.

  We were only able to stay for an hour or so, but it was so worth it! We want to go back & spend a few days there in the future. It is stunningly beautiful.

  I'm a fan of this page design because:
a) I could cram 7 (count 'em, 7!) photos on this layout.
b) It was simple to throw together because I used (mostly) products from one line - Basic Grey's Wonder.

I used some chipboard letters from Making Memories for the title.

That little scooter was just too cute not to tuck in somewhere on this page even though this subject has absolutely nothing to do with driving scooters.

I kept things simple by journalling along the side & keeping the margins nice & open. 

I love me some "white space"!

Products used:

Cardstock - American Crafts

Patterned Papers, Stickers, Border - Basic Grey

Chipboard Letters - Making Memories

Have you started sorting, filing, or scrapbooking your summer memories?

~~~~~

Thanks for reading. If you like what you see here on Silver Boxes, I'd love it if you would become a follower, 

subscribe by email (sign up on the right sidebar), or follow along on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 

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Enjoy your weekend!

Check out the great parties I link up to!

Strawberry Punch {Back At It}

  School starts today for our kids & it's a great time for me to get back into the swing of things here on the blog too. We've had a wonderful summer, but I'm ready for fall... crunchy leaves, warm drinks, baking, & autumn decor.

  In the spirit of bidding summer goodbye, I have one last summer recipe to share with you. I made this for our Labour Day BBQ & it was a hit! I've had this recipe clipping in my stash for years, but just had never made it. I believe it originated with Taste of Home.

Strawberry Punch {Printable Recipe}

makes 14 cups

1 can pink lemonade concentrate, thawed, undiluted

2 1/2 cups frozen unsweetened strawberries, partially thawed

1/4 cup sugar

2 cups strong brewed tea, chilled

2 liters ginger ale

In a food processor or blender, combine lemonade concentrate, strawberries, & sugar. Cover & process until smooth.

Transfer to a large pitcher or punch bowl; stir in tea. Add ginger ale. 

Enjoy!! 

I hope you all had a great summer!

~~~~~

Thanks for reading. If you like what you see here on Silver Boxes, I'd love it if you would become a follower, 

subscribe by email (sign up on the right sidebar), or follow along on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 

And please leave a comment when you do so I know who my new friends are! :)

Enjoy your day,

Check out the great parties I link up to!

Ideas For An End-of-Summer BBQ

  The end of summer is almost here. It's sad, but true. To send summer out with a bang, why not throw an end of summer or Labour Day party? We plan to.

  Here's some ideas that are inspiring me to make our party just a bit more festive.

Don't you just love the look of bunting? I don't know what it is, but it's just so darned cute! I'm thinking of whipping some up with some colourful handkerchiefs from the dollar store.

Source

Continuing with the handkerchief theme, I might make a table runner to match. :) 

Source

And use them as napkins with the cutlery in mason jars. The mason jars can also be used as glasses. 

Source

Adding some mason jars with brightly coloured flowers would be pretty. 

Source

And because our meal is a pot luck, I'm thinking of making some of these so people can label what they brought.

Source

I'm all inspired to party now! How are you ending your summer?

Thanks for reading. If you like what you see here on Silver Boxes, I'd love it if you would become a follower, 

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Enjoy your day,

Home.

  It's been three weeks. Three weeks of driving, playing, sightseeing, & experiencing. What a wonderful trip we had! It included 7 states: Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, California, Oregon, & Washington. Each one held new sites  & adventures.

  Some highlights (in no particular order):

1. Disneyland! The main reason for our trip was Disneyland. None of us had been before & it did not disappoint. My favourite rides were Radiator Springs Racers, Peter Pan, & It's A Small World.

2. Legoland. 

It was my son's wish to be able to go there on his birthday. We were thrilled to be able to make that wish come true! 

3. Sea World. We thoroughly enjoyed Sea World. The highlight of the day was petting the dolphins. 

4. Zion National Park, Utah. We only got to spend a couple of hours in the park & it just wasn't enough. We plan to return in the future to explore, hike, & enjoy for several days. The area is just breathtaking.

5. The Grand Canyon, Arizona. So vast & majestic. I had visited many years ago, but the rest of my family had never been. It was exciting to share this natural wonder with them.

6. Route 66. Driving from Flagstaff to Anaheim, we drove on Route 66 & stopped in a little town called Seligman, Arizona. We ate at a restaurant called The Roadkill Cafe & took lots of photos on the town's main drag.

7. The San Diego Zoo. My son loved the huge collection of reptiles & bugs. My daughter loved the pandas, elephants, & having her face painted. :)

8. USS Midway in San Diego. It actually wasn't in our plans to visit this floating museum, but we had some time one afternoon & the admission was included in our Go San Diego cards, so off we went. I have to say, even from a woman's perspective, it was pretty cool.

9. Avenue of the Giants. The stunningly beautiful drive through the redwood trees of California is indescribable. We would love to visit this area more extensively someday.

10. The California/Oregon coastline. We drove up highway 1 for the better part of a day. It was cool & foggy. Even though we couldn't see much of the ocean, what we saw was beautiful! We'd also like to come back & visit this area again. 

When we arrived home a couple days ago, I posted this on facebook:

"3,200 km travelled, a car covered in bug guts & dust, lots of Disney paraphernalia, almost 1,000 photos, 7 states, some great hotels, some not-so-great hotels, 1 house key mishap, 1 hospital visit for an ear infection, many Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew audio books, lots of Christian radio, so many beautiful vistas viewed... the epic Richardson road trip has come to an end, but the memories will stay with us forever."

Alas, it is over, but we now have several more places to go back & visit. We were so blessed to be able to take this trip & we treasure each memory we were able to make together as a family.

It's good to be home.

Gone on Holidays!

We leave today on our Disney vacation! 

We're ecstatic! It's been 2 years of planning & saving.

We are so blessed. 

I may (or may not) drop in here, on Facebook, or on Twitter for a few updates here & there. We'll see. :) 

I hope you're having a fabulous summer!

We're back in the middle of August.

Disneyland or bust!

Strawberry Daiquiri Pops

Are you spending these hot summer days outside or in? We love to enjoy the warm weather outdoors, so that means we need to have plenty of cold drinks & frozen treats to cool us off!

Our whole family enjoys this refreshing summer treat.

The first time I tasted an actual strawberry daiquiri was in Mexico at a fabulous natural water park. 

Since I don't drink alcohol, I ordered a virgin daiquiri. I tell you - delish!!

Strawberry Daiquiri Pops  {Print recipe}

makes 14 Dixie cup sized pops

1 can frozen strawberry daiquiri mix (I use Bacardi mixers - found near the frozen juice), slightly thawed

2 cups frozen strawberries (in syrup or not - it's up to you)

1 1/2 cups water

~Combine all ingredients in blender & blend until mixed, but strawberries are still a bit chunky.

~Pour into Dixie cups, cover with plastic wrap & put a popsicle stick through the plastic wrap.

~Freeze overnight. 

~To serve, run the Dixie cup under warm water for a few seconds to loosen the pop.

Enjoy!

I hope you enjoy this super easy summer treat!

Thanks for reading. If you like what you see here on Silver Boxes, I'd love it if you would become a follower, 

subscribe by email (sign up on the right sidebar), or follow along on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 

And please leave a comment when you do so I know who my new friends are! :)

Enjoy your day!

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