Celebrating the 4th

by Ann

Happy 5^th of July!  I hope your celebrations for our nation’s independence were fun and safe, and that you’re not sporting nasty sunburns.

This year my niece Megan and her hubby, Aaron hosted a family get together.  My contribution was to be snacky-food. 

What did we do before Pinterest?  I typed in 4^th of July appetizers and instantly many creative, delicious and attractive ideas staring at me from the computer screen.  I decided on a simple red white and blue fruit treat (today's topic) and firecracker shrimp, which I will write about in a subsequent post.

So here's what I used to have to do -- look through all these cookbooks until I was inspired...

Pictured below is the fruit treat I made, which was delicious and simple.  Cut the tops and bottoms off of strawberries the size of bite-sized disks.  Big strawberries provided two discs.  The tops made for great snacking! 

Pipe a dollop of a simple mixture of a seven ounce container of marshmallow whip and five ounces of cream cheese.  Yum!

Top each with a blueberry, and you're good to go.  Simple, attractive, and delicious.  Thanks, Pinterest!

What did we do before dollar stores?  Each holiday there are cute themed platters and decorations that no one feels guilty about tossing at the end of the party.  

Cute!  Perfect for Megan's party - The "crystal" bowls (4 for .99) will be used for dips.

The party was great fun.  The temperature was well over 100 degrees which made for perfect swimming and outdoor game playing.

Our local paper ran the blow picture of Arizona residents enjoying a picnic around 1900.
Even though the story was in reference to the 4th of July, there is no way this could have been summertime in Arizona!

We've come a long way.  I'm glad to live in the era of Pinterest and dollar stores.  Makes me wonder what the world will be like in another 100 years!