Happy (late) 4th of July!

Despite the fact that it is now July 12th, I promise I did in fact throw a 4th of July party ON the 4th of July - have just been too busy to upload since. Much to Trinas dismay, since she's probably waiting to upload photos to her blog too :).

That aside, decided that celebrating the 4th of July in America for the last two years was far too much fun to simply skip because I'm in the wrong country, so I introduced it to New Zealand! The biggest problem I found was the lack of summer - a 4th of July party is largely based around a good old BBQ (or cook-out, if you're of the American breed) and some silly outside games and swimming. We improvised with a heater, a scavenger hunt, and some silly hats.

Inspired in part by Amy Atlas and her dessert tables, I based the party around a heavily themed table and food, and mandatory colour-themed outfits.

Bakerella's cake pops/bites were lots of fun for this one - I used chocolate cake for original cake bites, and covered in chocolate, blue and red fondant stars, and little American flags on toothpicks.

Since I didn't already have enough flags (can you ever really have enough flags on the 4th of July?) , I played around with some fondant flags and put them on top of cookie-dough brownies - YUM. Not sure anything inspires more American pride than brownies, let's be honest. Though I'm not sure I'm likely to rediscover the inspiration to sort through multi-coloured star sprinkles anytime in the near future...

Now to my FAVOURITE part of the event - the PLANNING. Thanks heaps and heaps to Brandi at Tweedle Dee Designs for her free printables collection! I used the straw-flags and the water-bottle labels, which I used to decorate the cups holding straws, party blowers and multi-coloured cutlery. I realised on the day not long before everyone arrived that my table was very much without a centre-piece, but luckily we had a giant blue vase which I filled with large size flags! Flags, flags, flags and more flags.

Thank you to the family for manning the kitchen, Michelle and Steve for their giant icing-flag brownies, Steph for her epic 4th of July themed Scavenger hunt, Jayne for her inspired colour-themed drinks, Mattly for actually showing up, and Nicole for her ridiculously more-ish red dip! Just wait until Thanksgiving rolls along...