Recipes for 4th of July

Tomorrow is Independence Day (A.K.A. The 4th of July) and I hope everyone has a fun, safe, and festive day.  Celebrating Independence in this great country, USA.  To help our family celebrate, I have been looking for creative and festive recipes for the girls to make for the 4th of July.  This way the whole family has a part of experiencing the wonders of our RED, WHITE, and BLUE.  I found a few creative recipes that I thought would be nice to share with you.  Now if you live in a home of lots of people (as I do), sometimes money can be an issue with being creative, but I am going to give you the recipes I found and then give you an idea on how to make it not as expensive. 

Frosty Fireworks (Flavored Ice) drink.  The full recipe is found on the Disney Family Fun website. 
This recipe calls for:
a drink that is clear (Sprite, 7up, Water, Clear Kool-aid of some sort),
1 red drink (Fruit punch, strawberry, red Powerade, etc.),
1 blue drink (Once again, some sort of blue kool-aid would be good to use or blue Powerade, etc.). 

The night before your festive event (4th of July in this case) freeze an 1 ice tray of the red drink and 1 ice tray of the blue drink to make the ice cubes. 
On the 4th of July put in a variety of red and blue cubes and pore the clear drink of your choosing to make the drink come out looking red, "white", and blue. 

That is what the website called for; however, if your family is as large as mine and money needs to be stretched, use this concept but with a different twist. 
My family has decided to have a small gathering and one of the cheapest drinks to find for all the kids was Kool-aid.  We have a packet of the "invisible" Kool-aid mix that the kids with drink and the ice cube were made from water (yes, water-the clear liquidy substance that we generally take for granted...lol) and food coloring.  These were ALL items that we already had at the house.  If these are not items you keep around your house these are cheaper than the products that the website suggest.  Water comes FREE out of our fridge door or faucet and the food coloring may be about $3 at Walmart. 
Mix the ingredients to make the Kool-aid according to package directions and put about 3 drops of each color food coloring into separate glasses of water, put in ice trays, and freeze.  For those of you who are more creative you can use different colored kool-aid for the "ice" if you would like or add a festive decoration to your glass to make it the talk of the party. 

Well I hope you all enjoy your Frosty Firework drinks and have a wonderful 4th of July. 

Sparkless Sparkler Experience

My nieces and I just finished with a set of Spark-less Sparklers.  It was a fairly easy craft to complete with my small group of 6 year olds.  They did need a little help but not much to not do the project ever again.  The only thing I did a little different than the original directions was used black electric tape.  I just used what I had around the house.  Also instead of chopstick I used the small dowels that are used to make shish kabobs.  They turned out really cute and the girls are so excited about the 4th of July so they can play with there "sparklers".  I'm really glad they enjoyed making them and I hope you enjoy looking at ours.

I hope you all have a safe and Happy 4th of July.

Independence Day

Okay 4th of July is coming up in just another 2 weeks. Yay!  Time to find more fun crafts to keep the kids busy on their summer break.  So today I was looking up fun crafts for the kids to decorate the house for the 4th of July and I found a few other projects that they might enjoy also.  Here is one that I thought was easy for children and I really liked.

This one is the Sparkles Sparkler.  I found this project on the Merriment Design website.  It can also be found on the Daily Candy Kids website.

Supplies Needed:
2 Chopsticks (or 2 thin dowels)
Red, White, Blue, and/or Silver Ribbon and Party Garland
White 3/4" electrical tape
Scissors
Optional:  Personalize with Wooden Letter

For full instructions on how to make and manipulate this project visit Merriment Design website by clicking on the link.

Change this project up a bit by making them for birthday party's, decor at showers, center pieces for gatherings of all sorts.  Merriment Design says "This project can be easily adapted to making fairy and wizard wands, birthday party shakers or pom poms in your school’s colors."  So you can make this design even when the kids are at school.  Sounds like a plan to me. 
 
I can't wait to try this with my nieces.  I'm gonna post my own pictures of this project after my nieces make a few.