Happy Birthday and Independence Day!

Ahh...Good to be home. Good to see you again, too! I didn't get much time to recover from our 2-day drive home before putting on a birthday party for my littlest. I really enjoy his birthday because it is on July 4th! (I get to combine patriotic ideas AND birthday ideas!) {squeal}

I literally threw together this birthday party in a day! Even I am surprised that I pulled it off!

But I found such great ideas from other craft blogs while we were on vacation. {Love you, craft bloggers!} I just had to make them all as soon as we got back. I had about 24 hours to pull it off. So if you are ever looking for some fast party ideas with big impact, these are worth noting:

Poke cake for the birthday cake...

~~Make a white cake, poke holes in top of cake with a fork, dissolve 1 box of jello with 1 cup boiling water and pour over cake (do this for each layer), chill 3 hours, frost cake with cool whip topping~~

Ice Cream Sandwich pops...inspired by this at Living Locurto.

I had to make some red, white, and blue cupcakes with Homemade Buttercream Icing!

I will make buttercream icing any time I have a reason to!

Red and blue Jello flavored popcorn...I found the recipe here at Claire's Creations.

...What are your "go-to" party ideas?...

And seriously, I might have found my new July 4th tradition- Cheesecake Filled Strawberries! Mmmmm. Sadly, I don't have a picture of these, but I filled strawberries with cheesecake filling and topped each with a blueberry. I apologize for no pic. But we ate them all! And honestly, if it weren't for my husband (who knows I get super side-tracked during a party) I wouldn't have any pics at all. I think he took all of these. I did have to rescue them all with some quick editing in iPhoto. Note to self: Teach husband how to focus camera...even on auto.