4th Flowers

I absolutely love holidays and all of the traditions that coincide. The 4th of July is no exception. Ever since I can remember, my parents have had a huge cook out chocked full of star spangled fun. This year I wanted to bring my mom a hostess gift for continuing the traditions. Last weekend I saw a red, white and blue flower planter at the farmers market that gave me an idea.

Supplies: large terracotta pot, painters tape, paint brush, black acrylic paint, chalk marker, potting soil, alyssum, petunias, lobelia and red ribbon

I enjoy just about anything I can use my chalk markers on; however, I did not want to dish out the money on chalk board paint for such a small project. I just used basic black acrylic paint and it worked great! The painters tape gave me nice crisp lines.

This would have been a super cheap project if the hibiscus and mandevilla plants didn't catch my attention. I bought one of each : )

Glad Midsommar!

Our family has had a lot of fun cultural experiences from hosting four exchange students and making subsequent trips to visit their homes in Denmark, Sweden and Finland. On one of our trips in 2008, we were able to celebrate Midsommar in Malmö, Sweden. Midsommar falls around the summer solstice and has many uniquely Swedish traditions that include dancing around a maypole, making wreaths of flowers, eating herring, strawberries and drinking lots of Snaps.

Malmö, Sweden 2008

Malmö, Sweden 2008

Ever since this experience, I knew I wanted to host my own Midsummer party. We did our best to hunt down authentic Swedish food and Snaps. (mixed with plenty of American BBQ staples, I'm sure the Swedes will shudder when they see what we think is authentic Swedish cuisine) Although we had a CD with Swedish folk songs, we sang the only drinking song we knew....the Purdue fight song.

We rigged up or own maypole by using deck railing, wire hangers, and flowers from our gardens. I'm sure at this point we were starting to make the neighbors wonder...

We made wreaths of flowers for our hair. Our guests were treated with gift wrapped, hand poured soaps from the farmers market as party favors. http://naturalwonderssoaps.com/

My fairy godmother brought me a perfect Midsommar gift: vintage Ball jars and calla lilies (the same lilies we used in our wedding)

I hope you enjoyed our Midsommar festivites as much as we did!

(Me and my husband)