brecho cheapchic: summer

Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts

Summer Drinks to cool you down

I know summer is almost over, but my obsession with summer drinks is still in full swing! Check out these amazing (virgin) beauties:

Nancy's Fruit Water recipe here

Oopsey Daisy's yummy easy recipe here

Watermelon Straight up here

Citrus Daquiri

Watermelon Frosty recipe here

The Miller Family's homemade icees here

Now this homemade icee recipe has my mind going crazy with possibilities like trying this:

TIGER'S BLOOD Strawberry 60% and Coconut 40%

Snow Cone Syrup2 cups granulated sugar3/4 cup water
1 package unsweetened Kool-Aid®

Bring sugar and water to a full boil. Remove from heat and stir in Kool-Aid®. Chill. It's now ready for the crushed ice.

Or I've tried a lime slushy with just lime juice, sugar, club soda and ice. It was DELISH! And there's tons of lo-cal options, like diet Kool-Aid packets and Splenda. Or diet coke...

lemonade icees recipe here

recipe, summer |

Low Key Pool Party Ideas

I'm getting a few friends together tomorrow for a low-key pool party. I hate to even call it a "party" because then my psycho snobby brain starts thinking I need favors, labels, a dessert buffet... you get the jist! But, "pool get-together" doesn't have the same ring. I think I'm calling it a pool play-date. Ooo-kay, this is turning into a tangent that needs to end!

Anyway, here's a few ideas that are inspiring me:

I am thinking of giving the girls this cute free printable in 4x6 from Vintage Marigolds:

I don't have a source, but I have this on my pinterest board and it looks easy enough:

This one is like the pool party in my dreams! The Joys of Home Educating has the cutest idea for serving food at a pool party, I might end up with a version of this if my friends are lucky!!!

And MMMmmmm, I think I must make these pina colada cupcakes from Keri at Pressed Down, Shaken Together:

*update!! Of all my fun ideas, I actually only did the pina colada cupcakes, here's mine:

They were sooooo good! But they seemed slightly more pineapple upside down cake that straight pina colada. I did use the pineapple juice I had leftover from the can to add to the buttercream instead of as much milk. I liked it better than I was feeling about the buttercream. So just FYI :) But head over to her site and try this recipe out!

And I saw a recipe in the latest issue of Family Fun, but there isn't a picture. It's for a "pool noodle" salad. You use ziti pasta so that it looks like pool noodle toys, cucumber rings, and watermelon cut into balls. And it doesn't have mayo so it should outlast the heat. I know it needs a picture, but here's the recipe anyway from Family Fun's website:

Hands-on Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
Serves: 4

Pool noodles, swim rings, and beach balls -- this splashy pasta salad has it all. Plus, it's mayo-free for easy, delicious picnicking.

Ingredients

1/2 pound ziti pasta
3 pickling cucumbers
juice and grated zest from 1 large lime
1/2 cup vegetable or light olive oil
1 tablespoon suger, 1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 clove garlic, finely minced
2 tablespoons slivered fresh mint
1/2 cup crumbled feta
2 cups balls cut from a seedless watermelon

Instructions

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, cook the pasta until just tender, and drain.
Cut the ends off the cucumbers, then use an apple corer or run a wide drinking straw through the center to core them. Slice them into rings. Whisk together the lime juice and zest, oil, sugar, salt, and garlic.
Toss the still-warm pasta with half of the dressing, then add the cukes, mint, and feta, toss again, and taste. Add more dressing and salt to taste, then fold in the melon.

cupcake, Holiday parties, recipes, summer |

Fun in the Sun..or just FUN!!

The lazy days of summer are in full swing (did I mention LAZY) and my kids and I are all enjoying the idea of not having a schedule to follow and somewhere to be....HA that is such a joke!! Summer has seemed just as busy as the school year with swimming and tennis and this and that. We can hardly wait to go on our summer vacation. Which leads me to today's post. Sand cast hand prints. Now I did this with a couple of my kids several years ago in CA and they really turned out amazingly GREAT!! I was so excited and have them all carefully still packed away in a box with great intentions to do something awesome with them. So here I am a few years later remotivated to make the sand prints with my now 3 kids and I will do something AMAZING with them and then I can share it with all of of YOU!! In the meantime I found a great tutorial on how to make the sand cast hand or foot prints found HERE at Crafting a Green World.


photo courtesy of Crafting a Green World

Now, for those of you who want a fun in the sun craft without the sun or the beach here is another option that I am also loving at the moment.

kids fun, summer |

Summer Mantel

I've seen so many cute mantels floating around blog-land for summer! And somehow, when I see something I think I can manage, nothing less will do. Must be the inner holiday snob...

So here's my take on the theme:

I just stamped on the paint sample card (saw those used for a million cute ideas and knew I had to find one!) and framed it in a spray-painted frame. I also drew a shell on a yellow paint sample and framed that.

As you can tell, I just spray painted a bunch of small frames that I got from the thrift store. I am loving this summery turquoise color!

I made a printable to add to the display, just using a song lyric from one of my favorite bands recently, Frightened Rabbit. If you want to download it, it's sized for a 4x6, and I tried to get the highest resolution, so it should be decent. I just printed mine on my computer since the blue background is such a muted color.

By the way, if you want to see some other cute summer mantels, head over to our pinterest page!

Pin It

holiday decor, summer |

S'more? Yes, Please!

Glitta and I work together so well because our minds always tend to run along the same lines. (Last summer we showed up to a beach playdate each wearing a new swimsuit. The same one. And we both bought the same boutique t-shirt on an out of state vacation. We were in different states but both brought home the same shirt!)

So you can see why it shouldn't have been a surprise to me when I told Glitta that I'd seen an amazing s'mores dessert display by Amy Atlas and was thinking of a s'mores post and she replied that she'd just pinned a s'mores dessert that morning! I guess great minds just think alike...

For some reason the original layout picture isn't working, but this picture from Amy Atlas's blog gives the jist of the amazing display! I just don't get as excited about camping as I do about dessert.

And here's the s'mores dessert that inspired Glitta:

She spied it on Be Different Act Normal but this recipe and picture are from Baking Bites.

We found a couple of fun ideas you can buy to make s'mores a little easier, like this S'mores maker from Napa Valley

SAnd this S'mores Kit from World Market:

But my most snobbish find? Zebra print marshmallows!! They're at Walmart, in the summer section. They're really just dark chocolate drizzled marshmallows, but this holiday snob cannot resist zebra print for anything!

Pin It

summer |

Welcome the First Day of Summer in A Snobby Kind of Way

With Summer Officially here I like to have a Summer Kick Off party at our house. Nothing fancy just fun!! (And cross our fingers that the torrential rain we had ALL day on Monday will not resume today)

I think we will definitely hit the pool,run through the sprinklers, eat some otter pops, have a squirt gun fight, eat some more otter pops, take a bike ride. That should bring us to the fun part of the day...THE FIRST NIGHT OF SUMMER and to kick it off I thought it would be super fun to serve my kids these drinks with our outdoor BBQ on the fire pit.

I mean what kid will not think their mom is the coolest thing around when you serve them a glow-in-the-dark drink?? I can't wait!! Thanks to the snobby mommy at ComeTogetherKidsblogspot.com we can all be super cool tonight!
SO WELCOME SUMMER!! And enjoy the looks on your kids faces when you pull out the glow-in-the-dark drinks--and try to hide your own amazement too!!

kids fun, summer |

Summer reading list for kids

We have a few more summer reading lists, but for kids today! We have an idea for a couple different ages.

Left: elementary, center: toddler, right: preschooler

I bought this dilapidated copy of Green Eggs and Ham at the Goodwill. And before you freak out that I cut it all up and stamped on it, I promise it was missing several pages smack dab in the middle! This one was a gift, so I didn't write any titles down, but you get the jist, right? I made the banner from pages in the book.

This next one is more of an elementary school version. This book was also from Goodwill, but it was intact so I wanted to make a version that didn't destroy the book.

I photocopied an illustration and then cut it smaller...

I put a title and and large circles on the illustration and then added the titles to the circles. I used a clothespin to hold the sheet to the cover, but there shouldn't be any damage to the book. I thought it might make a fun end of the year gift for classmates!

The final one (I know, this isn't in any order that makes sense!) is the toddler reading list that basically just for decoration. Not that it hurts to have some titles in mind, I guess. I already had this cute little book, but it was torn to shreds.

I cut out the broken animal pop-up pieces to use for the titles.

Then glued them to a piece of twine with hot glue.

Here's a few of the pieces I used.

crafts, summer |

Summer Reading Lists

All the end of the school year stuff has kept us (and lots of the blogosphere!) hopping with events and teacher gifts and graduations. I, for one, start to dream of long lazy summer days pool side with a book beside me! Most kids are being sent home with some kind of summer reading list too! But do we just scan through the local bookstore? Nope. The Holiday Snobs have to turn our summer reading lists into a keepsake that looks good on a shelf! So we thought we'd share our snobby versions! Today we have teen (girl most likely) and Adult! And if you know a father who's a reader, maybe it'd make a good gift idea along with a new book?

For the teen version, I wrapped my favorite teen novel (not necessarily, but does anything say "teen" like a copy of "Twilight"???) with hot pink and yellow twine and stuck in these scalloped circles. I wrote three titles down from a recommended reading list and embellished the circles with some fun rhinestones. I used an embellished clothespin to attach the label so the book is completely unscathed.

For the Adult Summer Reading List, I made a 5x7 image on picnik just to have a clear template. It's not really very special, but I already did the work, so I might as well share it! Just save the image to your computer if you want to use it, and let us know!

I decided to display the list with a book redo that was inspired by a post I saw on Knock Off Decor. Jessica at Running with Scissors had seen these old books bundled by Ballard designs and copied them with some old paper backs. I used a couple of hardcovers from the Dollar Store and ripped the spines off, then bundled with twine.