Yesterday was my 31st fourth of July and Olive’s 1st. Olive is only 2 months old now, so she is limited to what she can do, but we had a lot of fun anyway. Here’s how we celebrated…
The day before, we were still stuck inside because of the heat so we did a fun art project using Olive’s footprints. I didn’t have any paint so I made some using 1 cup of cornstarch, 1 cup of water and food coloring. It turned out to be a little bit watery, so I just kept adding flour until I got the right consistency. I painted her heels red, the middle of her foot white (I just didn’t add any food coloring to that part), and her toes blue to make little Fourth of July Fire Crackers! 🙂
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I also found an easy science experiment on Pinterest called “Fireworks in a jar.” I filled a jar up with warm water, then I mixed together 4 TBSP of veggie oil and 4 drops of each food coloring with a fork. Then I poured it into the jar and showed Olive. She seemed very interested and watched as the different colors started to expand in the jar to resemble fireworks. Problem was, it did not last very long. It was only about 20 seconds before the whole jar turned into black water.
The next day was the Fourth of July. I dressed Olive up in a cute onesie that said “Hooray for the USA!” I made cup cakes that when put together looked like the american flag. I got vanilla cake mix with vanilla frosting and star shaped sprinkles. I made the cup cakes as usually then divided the frosting into three parts. One part I left white, the second part I added red food coloring and the third part, I added blue food coloring. Using a decorating icing tip and pipping bags I decorated 9 white cup cakes, 9 red cup cakes and 6 blue cup cakes. Then I dug through the many colored star sprinkles and picked out all the white ones and sprinkled them on top of the blue cup cakes. I was very pleased with the end result…
We spend the day at my mom’s house for a BBQ picnic. My mom has a pool, so all of Olive’s cousins were playing in it. Olive is too little for the pool this year, but she will be able to go in next year. I went in for a little bit, while Kevin stayed inside to take care of her. We of course had all the traditional Fourth of July picnic food, like hot dogs, hamburgers, pasta salad, chips, watermelon etc.
Everyone kept saying how cute Olive was and everyone wanted to hold her.
 When we got back home, we read some Fourth of July books. The two I have in my collection are: “Corduroy’s 4th of July”, and “Curious George Parade Day.”
We ended the night watching fireworks on TV. Olive actually fell asleep in the middle of it. We live near a huge park and every year we can hear and sometimes see fireworks from our house. After Olive fell asleep, Kevin and I watched a movie and we could hear fireworks going off the whole time.
Happy Fourth of July!