details by Kelly Miller: June 2012

This Independence Day celebrate our freedom from those British tyrants with the best Fourth of July party your friends and family have ever seen. Red, white, and blue palette? Obviously. Stars and stripes? No doubt. Easy, stress-free, and fun? Read on!

Décor and More

For simple but elegant centerpieces, fill round glass hurricanes with two to three inches of red beads or sand. Nestle a small glass cup and white votive candle into the vase filler and embellish with a small white star cutout. Click the image below for the printable recipe.

Use star-shaped stencils and colored sidewalk chalk to create a patriotic path leading guests to your party. Or take it one step further and make your own red, white, and blue star-shaped chalk to keep young guests (or guests young at heart!) entertained for hours.

Its time to dig out your Christmas decorations! Fill large glass vases and bowls with Christmas tree ornaments and baubles in shades of red, silver, and blue. Or hang them on the wall to make a wall decoration! Plain white Christmas lights strung overhead amongst red, white, and blue streamers will provide just the right mood for you and your guests once the sun sets.

On a tight budget? Visit the dollar store and load up on all sorts of inexpensive, what-would-you-need-this-for? items: paper pinwheels, flag picks, and streamers as well as stand-alone red, white, or blue elements like vases and plastic plates.
Use a ¼ inch star hand punch to cut perfect star borders around plain paper plates. The star punches can then be used to embellish blue forks. Add stripes to your red spoons with strips of white craft foam.

Balloons are a party must have but don’t let them go overlooked in a corner. Fill your large red, white, and blue balloons with confetti! When the time is right, let your young guests pop the balloons – creating a firework effect that the kids will get to enjoy before the actual fireworks start.

Featured Recipe – Cupcakes in a Jar!

Materials:

Vanilla cake batter
White frosting
Red, white, and blue sprinkles
Blue and red concentrated gel coloring
2” round cookie cutter
Piping bag
10-12 ½ pint canning jars
Ribbon
Lollipop sticks
Tomkat Studio Memorial Day Free Printables

Prepare the vanilla cake batter according to the box or your recipe and divide it into three bowls. Using the gel coloring, color one bowl of batter red, color one bowl blue, and leave the third bowl uncolored. Lightly grease three 9” cake pans (round or square) and line them with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the pans and bake according to the recipe instructions.

Once the cakes have cooled completely, remove them from the pans and use a 2” round cookie cutter to cut out circles of cake. Using a pastry deco bag, pipe some frosting onto the bottom of the jar. Layer cake and frosting as shown above (blue cake, a little frosting, white cake, a little frosting, red cake, a nice swirl of frosting). Top with festive sprinkles.

Decorate the jars with ribbon and The Tomkat Studio Free Printable Memorial Day designs printed on card stock and attached to lollipop sticks.

*Note - the cupcakes in a jar could also be make using cupcakes, cut in half, then used as directed above.

Hats off to your Guests

These Uncle Sam hat party favors are adorable and easy to make. Start by gluing red tissue paper to the top of cardboard toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls cut in half or thirds. Print out American flag graphics here and paste one onto each cardboard roll. Fill the hats with your favorite red, white and blue candies and seal them shut by attaching a 3″ red card-stock circle with a glue gun. Display the finished hats on a table at the party and invite guests to take a patriotic parting favor as they leave.