The 4th of July is one of my very favorite days of the year, which is why I’m excited to share a few easy 4th of July party ideas with you today! These ideas are simple yet festive, and perfect for an intimate at-home celebration.

I love an easy recipe for summer parties, easy weeknight dinners and just generally maximizing my time spent enjoying summer versus being tethered to the kitchen. This fuss-free tomato tart recipe is just such a dish!

These tasty apple fritter waffles are loaded with fresh apple flavor then dipped in a sweet glaze making them part waffle, part fritter and totally delicious.

This easy white wine sangria recipe is made with peaches and pineapple, making it a refreshing summer cocktail. Make a pitcher of this white wine sangria to share at your next summer party or to invite neighbors over to sip on the front porch.

Every year my uncle grows corn on a patch of land that was once a part of my grandparents’ dairy farm. Each summer we find ourselves saddled down with huge baskets full of corn and my favorite way to use up our portion is to make this buttery garlic parmesan grilled corn on the cob recipe!

Remember the bad rap that brussels sprouts used to have? They were often served mushy, overcooked and therefore tangy and bitter. It turns out, we were cooking them wrong all along! This easy oven roasted brussels sprouts recipes will make a believer out of just about anyone and they’re so simple to make!

My college boyfriend and I used to make our own beer and wine and bottle them in our tiny little rundown apartment, which was more of a shack attached to the back of an old falling down frat house. (True story.) Making and bottling beer was something we loved doing, and while it’s not a hobby I’ve kept up, it was absolutely my initial inspiration for making my own bottled cocktails.

Bob and I are both partial to a good potato salad recipe. It’s our go-to picnic food all summer, and we make it a bunch of different ways. This red potato salad recipe might just be our ultimate favorite. It is the classic potato salad recipe you need right now.

This oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe and I go way back. To my cold, drafty college apartment and one of the very first runs of the KitchenAid stand mixer my stepmother had gifted me for Christmas. (The one that still sits on my kitchen counter to this day!) But there is good reason I’ve been making these chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies all these years – they are crazy delicious!

This past fall I had so much fun making over our den and powder room as part of the One Room Challenge that I decided to tackle the challenge again. This time I’m taking on a makeover of Em’s toddler bedroom! It’s currently a mishmash of leftover furniture from her sweet little nursery at our old rental house, and the big girl bed we bought her last year assuming we’d get to this makeover way back then.

Our little Em is an OG playdough fan. Well, as OG as you can be at four years old, right? We first made homemade playdough a couple of years ago because this kid can sit for hours on end rolling and building until her imagination is exhausted. Here we’re sharing our favorite easy homemade playdough recipe – it’s so simple to make!

This week’s episode was a hard one to record. Honestly, it was hard to even think about and I’m not sure it’s an episode I’ll ever listen back to in its entirety, which I usually do before we push an episode live. But, this one was different. In this mini episode I talk about living through grief and what it’s like to be grieving the loss of a loved one during a global pandemic. What happens when you’re already grieving and suddenly life as you know it changes in a completely different way?