The Fun, Festive Ways We Celebrated The Best Patriotic Independence Day Party with Family & Friends

It did feel a bit like double-dipping.

As if I’d implored, “Make mine a double.” Double Birthdays, that is.

On July 7th, we celebrated not only Mother’s 98th Birthday!!

But it was also when the town marked Independence Day with their spectacular fireworks. So we saluted both with one sensational party.

Here’s how Bill and I worked to create a patriotic party that mixed the old-fashioned “America the Beautiful” with Mother’s extraordinary birthday.

How to Welcome Summer House Guests With A Spirited, Refreshing, Garden-to-Glass Hostess Drink

 

How do you welcome Summer?  And your vacation-time guests?  

Most folks calibrate the start of summer with all the festivities that are part of the 4th of July.  It doesn’t get much better than music, grilled food, cool, refreshing drinks. And Fireworks.

Hospitality is in my wheelhouse. So when guests arrive, I greet them with a special refreshment.   

What’s the cocktail to be this year?  Well, Let’s Make it Interesting…

Mother Nature’s Mash Up: Are Plants & Critters Creating their Own Melting Pot? And Accelerating Seasonal Garden Chores?

                                                

I had barely come to lament and accept that the peonies were all-too-soon past their prime blooming period. A truncated season. Peonies are pretty much my favorite flower so I am particularly bereft when they are gone…

If you’ve been feeling like you fell down the rabbit hole as you gaze with curiosity into the landscape and garden, you’re not imagining things. Plants and critters seem to have abandoned their clause that  “Time is of the essence.”  

Who gave them permission to take on a “time is fluid” attitude?? Let's Blame Mother. Mother Nature!

Everything's Coming Up Roses: June Tablescape Design Celebrates America's Favorite Flower & Comfort Food For Solace

 

Gypsy’s stage mother, Rose, belts out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” ~ the big, brassy paean to the power of positive thinking.

With June hailed as “rose month,” it was pretty much a given that my tablescape would feature America’s favorite flower, the rose, in a starring role.

That, plus roses have a nearly universal meaning of love and respect; making roses a perfect part of a funeral flower arrangement. 

Is that a pivot?  Not really. A journey of grief can be considered that positive thinking that Rose sang about. 

My tablescape was to be pretty and a tribute to comfort food and floral design as part of bereavement. 

Why?  I’m eager to share with you.