Independence Day

I loved this idea as soon as I saw it here. It's way down in the thumbnail assortment of centerpieces, if you go visit this link. The decorator used nine canning jars but I only had four. Well, I have a lot more, but not nine of a uniform size.


I guess I have more thrifting to do. Rats. That's going to be hard. Hehe.


Canning jars are my very favourite* decorating item. And storage item. I'm working on another project using canning jars. You'll see it in a few days.


Actually, the Man is working on it for me. I'm the idea girl, he's the actual put-this-idea-together guy.


That works out very well for me.

We had some friends over on Saturday night and decided to grill pizzas. 

I had an assortment of toppings and me and Mrs. C put together our favourite* ones, while the Man and Mr. C took a garden tour. The Man is very happy with his garden right now, since all kinds of yummy stuff is coming out of it. We've been eating peas, lettuce, and blackberries, and garlic and basil. 

But not together.

That's not so yummy.

So Mrs. C and I made a shrimp, basil, chopped tomato, parmesan pizza and then decided on a chicken, sliced tomato, basil, and mozzarella pizza for the second one. That's the one pictured above. 

I'm telling you - go grill yourself some pizza. You'll never go back to restaurant pizza again.

For dessert, we had chocolate strawberry nachos. 

Oh. my. goodness.

Very simple to throw together. Follow this lovely blog post over at Our Best Bites here.

Mrs. C and I kept nibbling long after the men had stopped.

Went to see the fabulous Mr. James Taylor on Sunday night with Sissy and my BIL.


And Mr. Taylor had two guests join him on stage.


Amy Grant and Vince Gill.


Holy guacamole, Batman. TWO country music stars.

We love sitting on the lawn, people watching, and snapping pictures. Enjoying a glass of wine, eating some Brie, and still-warm-from-the-press panini sandwiches.

We decided we have to step up our game next year. And bring a table. And candles. Maybe even a tablecloth.

These people are serious lawn party-goers.

Storm clouds threatened us for a part of the evening. At one point, everyone started packing up the food, and putting on rain gear, and looking for a tree to take cover under.

My BIL was watching the storm pass by on his crackphone iPhone and kept us informed of its location. We felt one drip, drop and that was all.

Thank you, God.

I did not want to sit in the rain, watching all our stuff get wet, trying to enjoy listening to one of my very favourite* performers. Not fun in the rain.

Rain, rain, go away. And it did.

Spontaneous dancing. 

Love it.

~~~~~~~~~~

*In case you're wondering what's with the spelling of favourite, I've decided to adopt the British spelling of words for a while. A friend posted something spelled this way and it looked right. So I'm going to follow suit.

Of course, I'll probably forget tomorrow. C'est la vie. 

Er, that's French. I'm feeling very multi-cultural tonight.