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Do you guys know that sherbet party punch that shows up a lot at baby and bridal showers? It’s usually served up in a big punch bowl and is made with things like fruit punch and 7UP® with scoops of sherbet floating on top. The idea is that it’s delicious, non-alcoholic and you get little bits of sherbet with each sip. It’s frothy, super summery and really refreshingly fun! Have you ever had it before? It is seriously some kind of delicious and I love that it’s such a simple concept, but sure enough you’ll always look over mid-party to find an empty punch bowl. Kids love it because it’s sweet and tasty. Adults love it because it somehow makes you feel like a kid again. That’s entirely what inspired these party punch sherbet floats! When I’m having friends over, whether it be for a dinner party or evening spent on the back patio, I love serving up something fun and slightly unexpected. Then you can keep everything else simple and they’ll still experience a taste of that wow factor that makes them feel a little special, and that’s my favorite thing in the entire world. Today I’m teaming up with 7UP to share how I made these easy but totally wow-worthy floats! (Be sure to scroll down for the step-by-step recipe video, too!)

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When we first bought our house last year, it was practically begging for an amazing backyard patio. We considered putting one in right away, but figured we’d first live in the house for a while to see how we really used the backyard. And, let’s be honest, there was the whole budget issue too since we’d just bought a house and had already tackled big renovations in the living room and dining room most notably.  As it turns out, we lived in our backyard all last summer. Long, lazy dinners that lasted well into the evening, copious bocce ball matches, the grilling of numerous homemade pizzas and the construction of one very fun homemade slip ‘n slide defined our summer days. By the end of summer, the patch of grass closest to the house was brown and beaten into oblivion from being constantly trampled over and we knew constructing a patio would be a top priority come spring of this year. Then spring came and it didn’t stop raining. For months and months and months. (Which, no, is not our normal weather pattern.) That derailed our “must have a patio by Memorial Day weekend” timeline, but sure enough come early July we were finally ready to begin construction. After one seriously intense month of work (which so many of you followed along with on Instagram Stories), our backyard makeover is now just about complete as of a few weeks ago and we’ve been loving using living in this space. It feels like a huge addition to the back of our house and we just can’t get enough of oohing and aahing over the transformation. So today, I have all the before and after photos for you! Plus a few photos of the construction process, too, just for kicks. Scroll through for all the details and chime in below with any questions.

Read More about Our Backyard Makeover + New Patio Reveal (Before and After)

You guys know by now that I simply can’t refuse a well-made summer cocktail. Trying out new recipes and making friends act as my personal test subjects while sipping cocktails on our back patio is one of my personal favorite things! Today I’ve teamed up with Master of Mixes to share this perfectly summery and seasonal blueberry mojito recipe with you. Because of their sincere commitment to quality, Master of Mixes allows you to enjoy naturally flavored, scratch-quality cocktails at home, even if you’re not like me and concocting your own simple syrups from scratch sounds like zero fun. And let’s be honest! Even if that is fun, sometimes you just want something quicker and easier that’s still crazy delicious, and that’s where this mojito comes into play!

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Nine years ago, I sat down one late summer day in 2008 and signed up for a Blogger account. I’d been “blogging” since before it was referred to as such on Live Journal long before then, but this was different. I’m not sure I knew quite how different it would turn out to be, but on that day I sat and wrote the very first blog post on a little blog I decided to name The Sweetest Occasion, a play on my mother’s maiden name, Sweet. (You can read more about that here.) Fast forward nine years later and I’ve been blogging full-time since May of 2011, less than three years after I’d started my blogging journey. When I started blogging, Twitter wasn’t even a thing. Facebook didn’t have fan pages. Instagram wasn’t even a twinkling in anyone’s eye because phone cameras were still years away from producing decent photos. The concept of Snapchat would have made us all laugh until our sides hurt. Blogging was a way of bringing people together, connecting with readers, forging friendships with people across the country or across the globe. And it was exciting. Today some of my very best friends in the entire world are friends I made through blogging back in those early days. Reading each other’s posts, leaving comments, maybe even exchanging emails and genuinely investing in these relationships was what made blogging special. No one thought we’d be doing this for a career, no one was worried about how many Pinterest shares any particular post would receive (because, you guessed it, Pinterest didn’t exist either), and it was all done for the love of the thing, not for the promise of any reward other than something deep, personal and intangible.

Read More about My Thoughts on Blogging in 2017

A few times of year I sit down and write a post that makes me uncomfortable. In the past I’ve talked about surviving divorce and about how I never wanted to be a mom. Sharing in that way is always liberating, but also really frightening, which I guess is a good segue for admitting that writing this post scares me. Today I am writing a post called, “The Very Real Reason I Don’t Share Photos of Myself Online” and I’m opening that post with a photo of myself. In a word, I am terrified. Over the last nearly ten years I’ve built a brand and a business online, and I’ve done so in a way that puts nearly all of the focus on the work I’m doing and the things I’m creating, and very intentionally not on myself. As much as I cherish my relationships with my readers, I’ve also been completely freaked out by the idea of making myself and my face the center of attention in any way shape or form. And the reason is simple. I don’t look like a lot of bloggers do. I am not perfectly thin, and petite and cute, and no clothing brands are going to want to send me their fall collection to feature on my Instagram feed.

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