Party Central

PREPPERS: We spent about 10 hours in the kitchen today, making all sorts of stuff for the annual neighborhood barbecue. 

We always make some kind of summery cookie and this year Annabelle and I cranked out a couple dozen Hawaiian shirts. 

I made pounds and pounds of mac and cheese from scratch, using four different cheeses, including a couple of tasty Beecher's varieties. 

We also made about three dozen delicious strawberry lemonade cupcakes (strawberry cupcakes with lemonade flavored buttercream). We made the tops look like lemonade yellow flowers, with different-colored little textured fondant balls for the flowers' centers.

I think they were the best batch ever. Using cake flour really does make a difference, IMHO.

We made three kids of deviled eggs: Bacon and blue cheese; salmon, smoked paprika and baby dill; and sriracha topped with pickled red onion.  We hard boiled 30 eggs, which made 60 deviled eggs. I thought that might be too much, and was kind of looking forward to leftovers, truth be told, but they were gobbled right up, darn it!

The easiest thing we made was watermelon on a stick. That's it - slice watermelon into pie-shaped wedges, cut a little slit in the rind, insert a wide craft stick and then freeze it. 

I thought it would be fun to make an adult version, so we sliced some up and drizzled vodka on them before freezing them. We wrote 80 PROOF on those sticks, and put cute stickers on the handles of the kids'/no-alcohol version. They were a big hit - and the adult ones disappeared first. 

We're in the middle of the block and the only ones with a flat front yard, so action usually centers in front of our place, and this year was no exception. There were so many new faces this year. I think there were more people I didn't recognize than people I did recognize. LOTS of little kids in the 'hood all the sudden. For years there, we were the only ones with young 'uns. 

Lots of people quizzed us about the rocks in the front yard, so we had to show them the growing quarry on our slope. I think we're officially the Crazy Neighbors now. ;)  We probably already were anyway. 

IN OTHER NEWS: Health-wise, CJ has had a good 36 hours. We are VERY happy about that.