Food for the Fourth (and another baby-related buy)

So as Monday was the 4th of July, I spent most of my day out of the house and up in Reading with some friends prepping an awesome cookout. Granted, only two of us were actually American, but my friend's kids, her husband, and my lovely brother-in-law and his wife were more than happy for an excuse to get together and have an outdoor summery feast. The Husband, alas, was off in Henley for a business course workshop, so he couldn't join in the awesomeness and fun. I think he was doubly sad because, not only did he miss the festivities generally, but he missed s'mores in the park and I was unable to salvage any of my apple pie from a ravenous hoard of Brits. I'm surprised I snagged a piece for myself, actually, after one family friend loudly declared the virtues of my baking! Seriously, I've never seen a pie I made get divvied up so quickly.

I confess, since I was helping to cook/bake most of the day, I have no pictures of myself (or of most other people for that matter). But I do have some great pictures of the spread that Kari and I and her girls put together. So, without further ado,

pretty tasty drinks. These were the product of a Costco trip. Is it sad that

I was really excited by that? It felt like being back in the States!

Lamb koftas. Simple, yummy, and highly recommended.

To be honest, you could probably do this with ground beef, too.

Pre-grilling chicken-pepper-and-pineapple kebabs.

Hard-boiled eggs getting ready for...

Potato salad. Definitely a cookout must.

Snazzy fresh herbs. I'd love to feel this impressive and grow my own

herbs in a cute box in the kitchen. I need a garden. Even just a tiny one.

Can we tell yet how much I love abusing the macro setting on our camera?

A glamour shot of the chips we got to round out the meal.

A very impressively colourful salad.

Oh, and in other, un-4th-of-July news: my latest purchase for the Bebe came in the mail today! After long conversations and some intensive Google searching, Seb and I have decided that - baby willing - we're going the cloth diaper route for our little bundle of wiggles.

Since that's the case, we realised we'd need a good container to house the soiled laundry until it got thrown through the wash. Enter, Tubtrugs! These amazing (and amazingly cute!) containers were a find from another of my new favourite domestic-goddess blogs: Making It Lovely. Since they're durable bendy plastic, I'm not worried about the piggly wiggly injuring himself (or herself), or destroying the container and strewing nasty diapers all over the place.

Yeah, in keeping with our Gender Surprise nursery theme, I got my Tubtrug in a preppy shade of green called Pistachio. Super fun.

I know most moms who go "Team Green" on their pregnancies (a.k.a: We're not scoping our baby's junk on the ultrasound) complain about people's insistence about an effusion of pale yellow and pale green everything. What about red?, they ask. What about orange and hints of different shades of blue or purple? What about a whole freaking rainbow? Personally, (as is pretty darn obvious) yellow and green really don't bother me. But why I think they don't bother me is that I haven't gone the whole pastel, cutesy, this is obviously for a baby...in case you couldn't tell route. The yellow on our walls is a happy bright hay colour, and the green in the lampshade, nursing chair, and now Tubtrug, are all bright and varied shades of green. Some forest green, some lime green, some apple green...this nursery is awash in a plethora of green. And before you get too concerned, yeah: I'm going to add some more colours to the mix. I'm not such a yellow-and-green nutcase that the whole room will look like a field of dandelions or something.

So that's my only update for now. I need to get back to some long-awaited cleaning and a few errands around town (including a trip back to North Camp to the Fabric Box!). Until tomorrow!