Happy 4th of July!!!

From the cutest girl in the entire world...

I might be a little biased :-).

How 'bout from our family to yours...

Kodi had a tennis ball in the pool that he was a little more interested in.  He normally doesn't miss a good photo op!

Hope everyone's enjoying their day!

If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed reader to get future posts delivered to your reader.


Linking up to Trendy Treehouse!

4th of July Fun

It was a rainy 4th of July on the West Coast of Florida (thanks Alex!!!), but we still tried to make the most of it. After our plans for beach volleyball and grilling got rained out, we did a few things around the house, and then headed out, in the rain, with our bikes in tow.

Poor Kodi though...he hates fireworks, and he hates thunderstorms, so he spent most of the weekend either under my jeans in my side of the closet (please excuse my mess):

And a close up of his pathetically sad face:

Or he went outside with me, and when it started raining too hard, he'd come pout in the garage by my projects:

He's mad that I haven't figured out a way to turn off the rain yet.

Okay, enough of my pathetically cute 80 lb baby, back to us and our bikes.  We put on our rain coats, rain hats, and parked a few miles away from the festivities, grabbed our backpack with our necessities, and headed out on our bikes.  

When life hands you lemons...

We were so happy we made it out to see the 4th of July fireworks...they were so beautiful, and the night cleared up perfectly!

And, I've got to post one of Chris's favorite part...the finale!

4th of July fireworks = Happy (smelly, sweaty, and wet) Hart's!

What about you guys?  Did your 4th of July plans get rained out or did you get to see a fun fireworks show?  I'd love to know!  I'm liking to Shutter Love Tuesday's over at Trendy Treehouse!  Go check out what other fun firework pictures everyone's posting!

Last Minute 4th of July Decorating Freebies

My D. Mom sent over a link to HP for a few freebies they have going on for the 4th of July.  I thought I'd share the freebie love!  Click here to check them all out!

  

Freebie Decorations for your fabulous 4th parties...

 

Free printable frames, just insert your photos!

 

And tons of FREE games for the kiddos...or those of you adults that are still really young at heart!

Hope everyone has a fabulous 4th of July!!

*All images on this post courtesy of HP.

Happy 4th of July Pie

Hope everyone has a happy, safe, and fun Fourth of July this weekend!

This is just my white chocolate pie recipe topped with strawberries and blueberries.

Doesn't it look delicious?  Trust me, it is!  We had to start our 4th of July celebrations a little early with a slice last night.  So good!

If you try it out for your celebrations, let me know!  Have a great, long weekend everyone!

I'm linking up to these fun parties...go check them out!

I love America

I'm patriotic.  I love my country.  In my living room, you can see a subtle theme of God Bless America with my wood planked USA and the picture hanging over my mantle.  So on Tuesday of last week, when Ana from Knock-Off Wood posted these plans, I knew I had to make it.  As usual, the original came from Pottery Barn.  Yep, I definitely like their style, just not their price!

Image Courtesy of Pottery Barn

Ana's plans call for scrap wood.  Slight problem...I didn't have enough scrap wood to make this.  I wasn't even close.  So we went dumpster diving to get it all.

We cut all of the various wood pieces to size.  We did have to adapt a bit due to the wood from the crates not measuring exactly the same as wood from big blue or big orange would.  We laid all of the wood out on our sheet of plywood and made a few adjustments until we had our square.

I used our sander with 60 grit paper and sanded each piece individually until my arm almost fell off.  I was thrilled with how good the wood looked after some serious sanding!

I used the Minwax Water Based Wood Stain tinted in china red and midnight blue, along with the white oak to stain my boards.  I mixed the midnight blue with the white oak until I came up with a light blue color I liked and used that.  If you do this, make sure you mix enough for 2 coats!  I didn't come up with a gray color, I just stained the white boards with quite a few coats, and then left the ones that were supposed to be gray with only two coats of the white stain.

I found stars at Jo-Ann's and traced them onto my boards with a thin paint brush and my white stain, and then painted inside the lines.

I love it.  These pictures were taken after I put it all together.

Chris helped me glue all of the boards down, trying really hard to keep our square.  We also nailed in the tiny 1 inch nails for an added detail.  Ready to see her in all her beauty?!

Oh...you'd like to see a few image from the side?  Okay!

Back to the front...

And to be fair, we have to add in the other side.

I still have to add the wall hangers on the back, but this one might be a gift, so I couldn't just yet.

Just in time for the 4th too.  God Bless America!!  Do you love her as much as I do?!  I'm linking to these fun parties...go check them out!

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!!

Four Year Anniversary

I have pictures to prove it...we did absolutely nothing but fun stuff for an ENTIRE day (can you believe it Steph?!)! We've both decided that we're ready for retirement already. Too bad I'm living until I'm 102.

To start the morning off, I made Chris breakfast in bed (yummy strawberry recipe at the end of this post), and printed out and framed our vows that I said to him four years ago. He wrote me this SUPER sweet letter (which I'm not allowed to post...but trust me, that man loves everything about me...including my "frowey hair"!), and got me roses. The 4th year anniversary gift is supposed to be flowers and fruit, so we stuck to that!

So what else did we do you ask?! We went paddle boarding!! (Err...surf boarding? With a paddle...that makes it paddle boarding, right?!)


We have the worlds greatest neighbors and they offered (we didn't even ASK!) to let us borrow their paddle board. We headed out to the Dunedin Causeway. We initially planned on renting a kayak and one of us kayaking and one of us paddle boarding, but then we both got on the paddle board and decided it was too much fun to go solo.


We headed out to Caledesi Island (the island pictured straight out in front of Chris) and rode around on the waves with the board, did a lot of walking and talking, and just had a great day together.

After we came in, we were super hungry from being out in the bay all day, so we headed over to one of our new favorite places, Ozona Blue. We sat out on the deck and ate and had some drinks while listening to a guy play on his guitar. So perfect...even WITH my frowey hair!!


And to cap off the night, I made Chris some more yummy cream filled strawberries. They were seriously so delicious!!


For those of you that are interested in the recipe, just take strawberries and cut off the tops so they lay flat. Then cut the strawberries in two but not all the way down, so that you have somewhere for the cream to go, like this:


For the cream, mix together 8 ounces of cream cheese (I used the low fat kind, still sooo good), 1 tablespoon vanilla, and 1/4th a cup of powdered sugar. I let the cream cheese sit out for a bit to soften. Beat those 3 ingredients together and then put that in either a pastry bag (yeah right, like I have one of THOSE) or in a zip lock bag and cut a small hole in the corner to squeeze out your 'frosting'. And Viola! Beautiful, delicious strawberries and cream. If you try out the recipe, let me know how you like it!

I am so lucky and blessed to be married to such a great and amazing guy. He's so perfect for me, and I love our life that we've created together!

Next post won't be so sappy, I promise!! Happy Tuesday! I'm linking up to these fun parties...go check them out!


I'm also linking up here for the 4th of July!