Oh How I LOVE the 4th

Yep, just as I said, I LOVE the 4th of July!!!  Can't even explain how much I do.  There's so many reasons why it's my very favorite holiday.  First of all, the 4th of July is at my most favorite time of the year, SUMMER time!  I LOVE summertime and heat and going out to the lake.   

Secondly, I LOVE the colors that go with the 4th.  If you were to walk through my house right now, all you would see is RED, WHITE, BLUE, and TURQUOISE.  I bask in them. Our wedding was red white and blue too, and it turned out very lovely, only I would love to do it again with a touch of turquoise! {grin}...Just recently (I'm sure you've noticed) I discovered the turquoise/red combo and I've loved adding it to my already red/white/blue decor. 

Thirdly, I love the food that comes with the 4th.  I love eating anyway, but the 4th of July food is on the top of my favorite list!  I love to eat summer foods like watermelon, sandwiches, fruit dips, trifles, potato salad, YOU NAME IT!! I just lament the fact that I don't have more time to enjoy that food. :)

Fourth, I LOVE the fireworks.  The booms, the crashes, the bangs, the colors, WOW!!!  LOVE them.  I had our wedding guests light sparklers instead of throwing rice or blowing bubbles.  It was SO much fun! I'm just a pomp and circumstance kinda gal.  Ally loves the fireworks so much, that last time she saw them, she clapped and said "oh wow" every time a firework went off!  It was so precious to watch.

Most of all, I love the 4th of July because it represents my very favorite privilege, FREEDOM!! I am such an independent spirit, I could not live without being free.  Or let's say I would have a very hard time doing so.  So I am most of all thankful to God for giving me the freedom to be me and to live according to my convictions.  I love that about God and my country America!  And I thank God that there are SO many people out there that are willing to fight so that I can keep that freedom.

I could go on and on about how much I love things about the 4th.  But instead of boring you to tears with my lovin', I will just share some of the fun things I found while browsing pinterest and blogs this week.   Hoping you will enjoy these as much as I do!

I don't know why I'm so obsessed with these old cars... ;)

Isn't this adorable?

Beautiful table setting

Cute candles

Stylin'!!

I might make these...

I thought this was so awesomely patriotic

Yummy!

And more yum!!

I just LOVE this table setting

The polka dots are SO fun!

And there's nothing more gorgeous than natural beauty!

The coolest 4th of July post I found this week was at Sassy Sanctuary 

my own blog designer Krystal's blog.  I just LOVE this mantel she made.  

It's SO fitting and lovely for such a wonderful holiday.  

I LOVE the little firecrackers best of all! She even has a tutorial for them 

I hope all of you have the BEST

4th of July ever!   And DO remember most of all

to thank God for the freedoms we have because so many 

people have sacrificed to give them to us! 

Linking up with This Kind of Love and The Vintage Apple
for their fun parties!!  Go check 'em will ya?

Thanks and Um, No Thanks :)

First of all, a great BIG thank you to all of you who participated in the very first Sweet Little Photo Swap!!  And really, for being the FIRST party I've ever had, it went rather well.  I was happy.  I would have loved it if MORE people would have entered, but I am thinking the party will grow with time.

Some of you were absolutely PERFECT and followed my rules exactly.  And to all of you, I really appreciate it.  Keep it up!!  I want each of YOU to come back every single week and join the party.  Which I am hoping you will do!!  Thank you SO much for your beautiful posts.  I just LOVED seeing your pictures and you helped to make the party EXACTLY what I envisioned it to be.  And because you all were so awesome I picked one picture from each of your posts that I want to feature.

Can anything get cuter than this?  Thanks BFF Bec for making a 

PERFECT photo swap post!  I just love ya!

Little Lucy Lu

 What a beautiful daughter you have, mommy at Faces with Freckles, 

and thanks SO much for the awesome post!  I'm excited 

to learn more about you!

Faces with Freckles

LOVE this picture at Lil Gerhardts of your

sweet baby boy! Such 

cute little chubby cheeks...what a doll!

Lil Gerhardts

Love seeing the pictures of your boys, Lesley!!  

Summer is SO much fun. And thanks for sharing your fun with us!  

Can't wait to get to know you better!

Brighton Brothers

Your daughter is SO cute, mommy at

A girl called James, I always enjoy seeing pictures

of your kids!  Hope you keep sharing with us each week!

A Girl Called James

Aren't all of these photos GORGEOUS!!  Photo Swaps are great fun aren't they?

Some of you sort of followed the rules, and entered a post with ONE picture, a small explanation by it, and MAYBE a link back to my site.  Just so you people know, I appreciate the effort, but next week I will be deleting the posts that don't follow rules.  I decided to let you off just ONCE, but next time, PLEASE write a post specifically FOR Sweep Little Photo Swap and link back to my page.  Don't just take one of your pre-written posts and try to make it seem like it fits the party.  I'm just not sure what is so difficult about posting only 5 pictures and putting small explanations by them.  :)

And sad to say, quite a few of you just linked straight to your sites, NO pictures, NO mention of a party, NO posts even about the photo swap.  With those posts, I just plain old deleted them.  Gone, gone gone.  Please don't enter those ones again!!  Whew!!  Done with that one.

And just a question for those of you that joined AND followed the rules...would you like to keep doing the party just as we did it with sharing favorite pictures from the week?  Or would you like to mix it up a little with certain types of pictures or different themes for each week.  I would LOVE your input and suggestions.

For this next week I will be doing everything EXACTLY the same.  Hopefully we will get more people to join in!!  So get out your cameras and start shooting!!  And invite your friends!  I am SO excited to see you again next week for Sweet Little Photo Swap!  Have a great week.

Mountain Man Bill

Remember I told you that I had a crazy and WILD story that involved my dad, an elk, a bear, and a suburban?  Well, I'm finally gonna tell it to you.  Wait till you hear this.  I wish I had pictures to prove that it happened, but I guess my mom just sat by watching all of it not even THINKING of taking pictures.  Oh well.  It happened anyway.  And here's how it went. 

First of all, since most of you have never seen OR met my dad, I think I owe you a description of him.  Does this picture give you an idea of him at all?

Yeah, he's one BIG ol' tough Montana guy.  He's hiked these mountains all of his life.  And he still is hiking them!  Cool thing about that is that he JUST turned 66.  Impressive isn't it?  This is a picture of him snowshoeing up one of the peaks behind my house.  It's near the top of a 9,000 ft peak and he hiked all of the way up on his snowshoes!  I've hiked that hike in the summer and it is a tough hike.  But winter, nope, I haven't braved that one yet.  Don't think I ever will.  But Dad can't even count the times he's done it on snowshoes. Dad is also a logger (has been ever since he was young) and if you don't know anything about loggers, they cut down trees for a living and that is a pretty tough job. (A lot of people refer to them as lumberjacks.) Logging requires A LOT of walking and lifting that makes a body pretty strong.

Ok, so back to my story.  Or HIS story as he told it to me.  (Now that you know him a little bit, I think you just MIGHT think about believing his story.)  haha  The other day Dad and Mom decided to check out the flooding around there (it's CRAZY right now), so they took a drive up to the ghost town that is behind our house.  Their house is in the valley and the town of Elkhorn is up in the mountains, so it takes awhile to get up there.  About half of the way there, they decided to stop and take some pictures of one of the creeks that is flooding.  As they were taking the pics, a suburban drove by and passed them.  Not too long after they too decided to keep driving.

Not too far up the road they came upon the suburban again, but this time the suburban was stopped on the side of the road.  (Often in MT when another car is stopped, you might want to take notice just in case they are watching some wildlife on the side of the road!)  As Dad and Mom came on the scene they also heard a terrifying SCREAM coming from really close by!  And there in the meadow they saw it.  A small black bear catching a baby elk!!  The baby elk was the one screaming because the bear was catching him.

This is where the story gets exciting!  My Dad, being the tough ol' guy that he is, immediately JUMPED out of the car, RAN down towards the bear, and started screaming at him to let go of the baby elk!!  Yeah I couldn't believe it either.  I guess my Mom (understandingly) was telling him NOT to go, but he took no notice of her.  

As my Dad was yelling at the bear, the bear dropped the baby elk and RAN away into the trees!!  (When I asked Dad what happened to the bear, he just said, "Oh I don't know, I was just concerned about the baby elk!")  Imagine getting a bear to run away from you.  WOW!  I would have LOVED to see it.  And that isn't the end of the story!

As soon as the bear dropped the baby elk, it RAN over to Dad.  (The Mom elk has been watching all along from in the trees).  Then it got scared and immediately jumped right into the raging stream!!  And Dad takes off running after it!  (I told you it gets better)  The water was so crazy that it held the baby elk's head under water so it was just bobbing along helplessly and floating downstream.  POOR baby!!

But Dad didn't give up!  He kept running after the baby elk as it floated downstream and tried to get a hold of it.  FINALLY, after struggling for awhile to reach it, he happened to grab one of its ears and got its head above water.  Eventually he dragged it onto a rock to safety, which made it scream again.  (My Dad said it was VERY heavy even though it was a baby.  He was very thankful he was actually able to pull it to safety.) Then it jumped up, ran across the road, and was reunited with its mom.

Dad said his lungs even hurt after all of that!!  Wonder why that would be?  LOL  And now you know why I said you wouldn't believe it.  Great story huh?  I think it deserves to be in the movies or something don't ya think?  I guess the people in the suburban watched the whole thing happen.  There was even a little boy along and my Dad said he got SO excited!!

The thing I still can't believe is that Mom just sat there the whole time without even a THOUGHT of the camera.  Wouldn't that have made quite a film!!  I think I should write a book called the "Adventures of Mountain Bill".  What do YOU think?  {grin}

LOVE my Dad.  There's NO one quite like him.  And yes, this would have made a GREAT Father's Day post, but being the LATE person that I am, it just had to wait.  Hope you enjoyed hearing it as much as I enjoyed writing it!! :)  I'll have to admit, there ARE some pretty wild stories coming out of Montana.  But that's just how Montana is.  Wild and absolutely beautiful!!

Oh and before you go, my Sweet Little Photo Swap is still going on and you can still write and enter your picture post!!  Would LOVE to have you join!

Sweet Little Photo Swap

Yay!!  I'm SO SO excited to be hosting the very FIRST Sweet Little Photo Swap here at Sweet Little Gals.  We are going to have SO much fun sharing our favorite photos with each other.  Sunday is one of my favorite days anyway, and NOW I have the Sweet Little Photo Swap to look forward to each week!  This is my very FIRST linky party, so bear with me if everything doesn't go exactly right.  I hope lots of you will join in and share your photos with each other. 

Here's the party rules.

Each week at Sweet Little Photo Swap you will write a SPECIFIC post for that week featuring your  favorite photos of the week.  You can use from 5-10 photos.  (yeah, I already changed the rules a little!)  Provide an explanation of why you liked the photos and then link up to the party!!  Then follow the person AHEAD of you on the list and BEHIND you on the list.  That way we will each get at least two more followers each week from the party.

It would be AWESOME if you would follow me as well since I will be hosting the party each week.  And please put the Sweet Little Photo Swap button somewhere on your blog so that it will link people back to here.



Note:  Just so you are aware, I will be deleting posts that don't follow the rules, so if your post suddenly disappears, you may need to go back and re-check the rules.  Thank you in advance for following them!

Now here's how I want your posts to look for the Sweet Little Photo Swap.  I will write a sample post (and will be every week) that will help you know how to write yours.

I don't know about you all, but I had SO much fun this week taking pictures! I just LOVE this one that I took of Whitney.  She's such a sweetie and a little joy to be around.  And that smile!  Something about it just makes ya get a good feelin'!  :)

 LOVE my Ally girl!  And she is a phone girl now...

Uh oh for the phone bills when SHE'S a teenager! {grin}

Flower smellin' is the BEST!

Ahhhhh!

 Don't old barns just make the coolest

backdrops?

Can you BELIEVE these gorgeous 

clouds?  Make for some awesome

photography ops!!

Photography is SO much fun!!  Don't ya think?

Now it's YOUR turn!!  

I can't WAIT to see your pictures!

Have a spectacular Sunday! 

Fun-day Friday

I am pretty sure that summer is my FAVORITE time of the year.  It is just so much FUN!!  There's really NOTHING like the warm sunny days and spending time by the lake.   I just LOVE everything about summer.  Here's some fun summer stuff I found this week that I thought you would enjoy seeing for Fun-day Friday...you can find all of them on my Pinterest boards.

Remember how I talked about how we MIGHT be getting a camper in my post last Friday?  Well, guess what?  We did!  And as we speak Dave is headed down to Iowa to pick it up.  :)  I can't wait!  Not long from now we will be on our way to Montana to see my family, PLUS bringing along our FUN camper to enjoy. This will be us...truckin' down the road!  LOL

I am thinking that THIS decor may be a great way to make 

my new camper more stylin'!! What do YOU think?

I would LOVE to travel to this spot to spend a few days this summer...

Or I might like to be here...

I sure wish I had one of these beautiful porches to relax on...

I LOVE the way these tv trays were re-done...

So much fun for summer porch sittin'

And ANY of these kid's crafts would be 

SO FUN for summer

Homemade sidewalk chalk

Homemade marshmallows

What could be more fun than this personalized picture?  

I can't believe this lady made these herself...

And this has been and will be  one of

my mottos for life...I just LOVE it because it's 

SO true

 

I love these FUN little colorful tins I 

made this week

And I can't leave without sharing this 

DARLING and fun bag that I got this week

thanks to Bag Full of Posies (thanks Bec, for 

recommending her!)

And I'm linking up with Bec for her 

Fun-day Friday at Little Lucy Lu

Have a spectacularly FUN Friday!

And be SURE to come over on Sunday 

to join in on Sweet Little Photo Swap!!

Colorful Tins

I found these cool tins in the craft store the other day and thought I'd transform them just a little bit.  Here's what I did with them...

The original tin looked like this...

So I spray painted them to look like this...

I left a little of the tin part to peek through so they still 

looked a little vintage.  Then I stenciled on some flowers. 

And this is what I came up with!

`I thought they turned out really cute!!  No, NOT perfect

by any means, but CUTE!!

You could use them for a variety of things but I decided they would look awesome
OUTSIDE with some flowers in them.
Here's what the finished product looks like.

 

(Super Duper Secret...there's even worms inside of those pots!!)

Be sure to come back on Sunday for the Sweet Little Photo Swap!!