T Stands for July 4

Happy T Day everyone. Today I want to share some snippets from last week's July 4th celebration . I can't believe the 4th of July has come and gone. A week ago. 

So my first share is the strawberry cake I made for the holiday. 

We say my dog Maddie's birthday is July 4, even though we don't know for sure when she was born. Its a good excuse for me to make a wild cake and have it not sit there tempting me because most everyone eats some.

I don't know why my pink strawberry batter turned light brown when I baked it, unless maybe I slightly overbaked it. It certainly wasn't burnt. But it was layered with strawberry puree and some strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream.

Here's the birthday girl looking awfully cute.

And here's her cute dog cousin Sophie.

These were taken while we had dinner. It was a pretty quiet holiday overall since a few people were missing. But there was still 12 of us. So what we traditionally do for our meal is everyone brings a side and then each family brings their own kabobs. There were fish kabobs, veggie kabobs and we brought steak tip kabobs.

You can see my kabobs along with a bit of pasta salad on my plate and also my diet coke.

Earlier in the day we enjoyed the sun down on the deck.

A margarita tasted good after my swim. 

Only one of these is mine. The other is my husbands.

Hardly anyone swam but I did. Not  the most flattering photo. :)  The dogs love to get up on the swim raft with me. 

Everyone else spent more time enjoying the dock and the sun.

No fireworks to wrap up the holiday this year. Since the hubby had to go to work the next morning we made it a fairly early evening and headed home. I did miss them though.

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to see what the rest of the T gang has been up to. T Day is a great time to share some drink and food photos and stories, so you should join us.

And have great Tuesday!