Patriotic Hair Bows!

Yesterday for our 4th of July activity, we made patriotic hair bows that the girls can wear on the Fourth. I got out all the red, white, and blue ribbon and told them to each pick what they wanted for their bows and I got to work making them each their own set of "custom" bows. They loved it! (Again, Hayden ate patriotic animal cookies and took a nap during this project. He is much happier sleeping and eating than making bows!:)

Here is a shot of each girl with her bows! Since Kate would just mush hers, she is modeling hers instead! She likes it! (Either that or she likes playing with my cell phone!)



Lana with her bows. She is such a cheeser in pictures! Can you tell she is saying, "Cheese?"

Rylee and her bows. She was all worried about how she looked in this picture for some reason. What a goof!

And a close up of all three pairs: So fun! I love the Fourth of July, just in case you haven't caught that yet!

And, as promised, here are some fun patriotic meal ideas:

For our lunch/dinner on the 4th, we always do a red, white, and blue dinner as much as possible. Here is a picture of some of the food from last year (yeah, not a lot of effort last year in the decorating department, but hey, I was two weeks away from delivering Kate. I was just glad to be moving at that point! And I look thrilled in the picture as well! Oops!):

~We always make home-made rolls and when you are rolling them out in the pan, you just food color the tops of them to make the flag (then your fingers are patriotic the rest of the day!) Then you can either just eat them with strawberry jam on them and BBQ some meat, or you can use the rolls for deli sandwiches (so yummy when the rolls are hot!)

~ Blue Jell-o with white Cool Whip on top. (Sorry, no fruit in our Jell-o!)

~ Watermelon cut into stars (way easy to just use a cookie cutter, and the kids love it!)

~ Pasta salad with rainbow noodles (Yeah, I know it is orange, white, and green, but ya gotta have a filler!)

~ Red Gatorade or other red drink.

~ If you can find the patriotic tortilla chips, that is fun, but if you can't then Doritos and Salt and Vinegar chips work (sort of red and white!)

~ For dessert, my favorite! Make a chocolate cake in a 9X13 pan (duh) and when it is still warm, but not too hot, sprinkle about a half of a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips on top and lightly press into the top of the cake - just enough to keep them from rolling around. Then put the cake in the fridge for about a half an hour to finish cooling and preventing the chocolate chips from melting. You want them to be a little soft, but not melt all over! Then, take the cake out of the fridge and frost with Cool Whip. Then, for the really yummy part: Place blueberries in the corner to make the blue part of the flag and then place sliced strawberries into rows to make the stripes on the flag. And voila! You have a beautiful flag dessert and it tastes HEAVENLY! Make sure you refrigerate any leftovers!

If anyone else has any fun ideas, please let me know! I am always looking for fun things to make and do on the 4th! And I would probably have some more fun food ideas if my kids weren't so dang picky! But I hope you enjoy, and let me know about the fun things you do on the 4th! I would love to hear about it and see pictures!!!