Labor Day gives us an excuse to send off summer in style. We can enjoy those fresh cut flowers, juicy fruits, and BBQ grill marks one last time before the autumn weather hits us. Here are a few ideas to make the best of your Labor Day extravaganza!

* Summer Colors Get One Last Hurrah! We all know the rule “Don’t wear white after Labor Day.” Have your guests come dressed in summer whites head-to-toe. Decorate your surroundings with bright summer colors that will also be stored away come fall.

* Take Advantage of Summer Fruit: Use fruits that are in season such as plums, nectarines, and tomatoes as edible centerpieces. You can find these fruits discounted right now and they make great snacks for your guests!

* Round Up the Whole Gang: Have a neighborhood barbecue potluck. Everyone has been perfecting his or her summer BBQ recipes all season long, now put them to the test! Either declare a theme (such as a chili and cornbread cook off) or let guests choose their most appetizing creation. Have the kids be the judges, as they always seem to be the pickiest eaters anyway!

* Labor Day Wine Tasting: Take advantage of your local wine purveyors and vineyards and spend the day discovering your new vino selections for the coming year! With your newfound purchases, cook up a memorable dish that guests will rave about. Sea Scallops in Grilled Portabello Caps with Zesty Pomodoros and Summer Squash, are absolutely delicious!

* Have a Bonfire: While the weather is still warm, enjoy the evening by the fire pit. Have the kids make smores while you make a smores martini – Vodka, chocolate liqueur, graham crackers and marshmallow cream!

Back to School is upon us, but buying the same ol’ yellow, No.2 pencils just seems so yesteryear to us. So today we surfed our favorite site, yep, etsy.com, to bring you some fun back-to-school knick-knacks that will surely brighten those first days back to reading and arithmetic.

*Brown bag lunches just wont do. Try these environmentally friendly cloth sandwich bags, http://www.etsy.com/listing/54810230/ . They are also the perfect size to hold some snacking crackers or cookies. The bright fall colors spruce up any dreary day, or any plain ham sandwich.

*We love instant gratification, and you can get just that with these printable school bus labels, http://www.etsy.com/listing/54802415/ . No need for shipping, just pay to download the printable pdf, and you are on your way to deliriously cute food labels, place cards, or thank you tags. The possibilities are endless!

*Along with a cup of coffee, mid-afternoon snacks get us through our day. What is the perfect pairing to coffee?? Chocolate, duh! How about chocolate Oreo cake truffles? Yeah, we were that excited too when we found these delicious morsels, http://www.etsy.com/listing/54805104/ .

Labor Day gives us an excuse to send off summer in style. We can enjoy those fresh cut flowers, juicy fruits, and BBQ grill marks one last time before the autumn weather hits us. Here are a few ideas to make the best of your Labor Day extravaganza…

*Use those bright summer colors one last time in your decoration. A beach ball is a great jump-off. Those bold colored stripes on the classic inflatable beach ball is a great way to start your inspiration board. Plus, the actual beach ball should surely make a splash cameo at your extravaganza.

*Patriotic colors are also incouraged when decorating, as it is a Federal Holiday. The colors of the American flag are always timeless and guaranteed to be a success because of their inherent patriotic connotations.

*Fruits such as plums, nectarines, and tomatoes are in season and greatly discounted at most supermarkets. Take advantage of this summer bargain and have your centerpieces be bright bowls of fruit that guests can snack on. If they go uneaten, the fruit can be used as snacks for the kids first days back to school.

*Involve the whole neighborhood by making it a potluck. Everyone has been perfecting his or her summer BBQ recipes all season long, now put them to the test! Either declare a theme (such as a chili and cornbread cook off) or let guests choose their most appetizing creation. Have the kids be the judges, as they always seem to the pickiest eaters anyway!

*We all know the rule, ‘don’t wear white after Labor Day.’ Well, let’s use that as an excuse to throw a white-themed party on Labor Day. Get use out of those summer whites one last time.

The holidays are coming up which means your party pants are about to be lit on fire.  We think the sexy new thing is to use that technology you spend hundreds of dollars on (imagine that!) to help you plan your next event. Louise Baker came up with some ideas that we LOVE so we have  invited her to be a guest blogger this month. Her article about the top 10 most innovative iPhone apps to help you plan your next party is definitely noteworthy! Grab your iPhone and follow these tips to ease some of your party-throwing nerves.

Handle Your Pre-Party Planning

Simple Soiree

This app provides an easy “form” to fill out to make sure you don’t overlook many of the easy-to-forget details. Keep track of guest lists (and any food allergies!), RSVPS and menus and to-do lists.

GroceryIQ

Prepare your grocery list and check things off while at the store. You can arrange your items by store, and even by aisle to streamline your pre-party shopping. This app even helps you collect coupons you can print out to spread your party funds a little further.

Throw a Dinner Party

Harvest

Bring your iPhone to the farmer’s market and let it help you pick the best fruits and vegetables for your upcoming party. Providing an alphabetical list, Harvest can give you tips on picking the ripest produce while avoiding the rotten apples, and even gives you tips on how best to store your veggies!

Locavore

Similar in principle to Harvest, this iPhone app let’s you search by location and alerts you to the vegetables that are in season by you. Imagine serving up a bunch of fresh seasonal recipes, whether they’re peaches or rhubarbs to celebrate the summer or apples and turnips to rejoice in autumn.

Ratio

This app will help you adapt recipes for all sizes of company. In addition to recipe calculators and unit converters, this app will save your favorite recipes for future use.

Tea or Coffee?

Taste Timer – Tea

Tea is an art. Select your kind of tea and let this app make you a beautiful cup of tea for an afternoon tea party.

Taste Timer – Coffee

Make a beautiful cup of perfectly brewed tea for your guests. This app sets a timer and provides great instructions for a variety of copy recipes.

Bartend With Ease

Cocktails

Complete with a huge index of drinks, would-be bartenders can search for a drink by ingredient or drink name and even learn which type of glass to use. Frequent party planners can save drinks as favorites to keep their guests coming back for more.

Throw a Classy Wine and Cheese Evening

Hello Vino

This app can suggest wine pairings for food and special occasions or smartly select wines by region. Hello Vino will even learn your wine shopping habits to tailor its recommendations more to your speed.

Fromage

With a listing of 750 cheeses from around the world and access to online cheese libraries, this app can introduce you to new cheeses and steer you away from the ones that might just be too…aromatic for your guests. This pocket guide to cheeses includes great photographs!

Thanks Louise for the awesome article!!!

Who knew summer would blow by so quick? One of our go-to sites, www.etsy.com , is already showcasing fun fall-themed party additions. We fell in love with this batch of whimsical fall leaves, http://www.etsy.com/listing/54039702/lots-of-fall-leaves?0=ref&1=mt .

The decorating options with these leaves are limitless. We immeadiately thought to use them as place cards or loop a string through them to make them into napkin rings. The seller on Etsy suggests them to spruce up a back-to-school scrapbook.  A Thanksgiving or Halloween table could also use a good sprinkling of these fun leaves. The colors reminds us that those fun fall holidays are just around the corner— along with a multitude of Halloween candy, candy corn being our favorite!

We’ve got another website that we recently discovered and are going bananas for; www.howstuffworks.com. You can literally find anything and everything on this site. We have spent many procrastination hours browsing around and finding inspiration for our next gig.

We have happily indulged in cotton candy and carnivals all summer long without a care in the world, except we have been slightly curious about how exactly cotton candy is made, and could we replicate its delicate sugary delight at home?

Well, aforementioned website, www.Howstuffworks.com , answered our question and then some with this page, http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/cotton-candy.htm . We can’t wait to bust out our cotton candy trivia at the next rodeo!

As a lot of you know I recently went to a family reunion in Ohio. This was trying for many reasons.

The reasons include but are not limited to the following:

* I get very confused as to where Ohio is and think it’s like a 2-hour flight, thus I get antsy when I forget to buy adequate snacks, magazines, etc at the airport.

* The hotel situation. I would rather camp in dirt with every kind of bug and spider imaginable than stay in a challenged hotel. Because the reunion was in the small town where my Mom grew up, the hotel options were, shocker, limited. Oh, this place tried, but there were a few teeth missing among the staff and let’s just say that fruit on demand was not an option.

* Traffic. There was none, the natives thought it was miserable. Um, what was the miserable part? The traffic consisted of 3 cars at a light instead of 2.

* My Mother. I love her. I love her, love her, love her, let me count the ways. However, lots of time was spent…

- Recounting details of the house where the after prom party from her Freshman year was where she made her dress, (probably out of tablecloths from silk worms she fed and raised).

- Shhhhing me (CONTINUOUSLY) because “this is a small town!!!!!” Shocker! I know! You’ve mentioned that four thousand times! There is only one stop light! There are fields of corn and stuff everywhere! I get it! But I wasn’t saying anything bad! I just asked if my grandfather’s friend was still alive! I didn’t say you killed him! I didn’t say he was a philanderer! I just wanted to know if he had a HEARTTTTTBEAT!!! It’s going to be OK!! Everyone in the diner will recover from the question!!!!

But what I loved was better. The reasons include but are not limited to the following:

* Midwesterners are so unbelievably, freakin’ nice. I had a mascara crisis and people came out of the woodwork.

* Corn. I love corn fields and I really love corn. I saw lots of it for sale, but not a lot of it made it to my restaurant meals, because…

* …I was focused on the hot dogs. I ate so many hot dogs from that little Hot Dog Shoppe (this involved more prom stories, shhhhhshing! and carbs that I did not need.)

* The pace. No one was in a rush. Not aaaaaattttt alllll. Noooooo rush. People were verrrrrrrrryyyyyyy gracious and melllllllowwwwww. The fact that I could’ve been in cardiac arrest because of all of those hot dogs would not have posed a problem for anyone in Ohio. They would’ve given me a little fresh lemonade, had me lie down and someone would go see if a doctor was available. Maybe in Florida. Florida should have a doctor. Let’s drive down and see. I could just sit tight. No stress there.

* Porches. Maybe that’s why everyone in Ohio is so nice and happy. They have porches. They can sit on the porch and talk (drink), get to know each other and relax. Maybe that’s what I need. Maybe I need me a little porch time with some corn and lemonade (hold the hotdogs) and I could relax. Breathe a sigh of relief. Watch the corn sway and the sun set.

So what’s the bottom line? More of us should hang out in Ohio. Maybe if I went to Ohio a little more often I would be able to finish what I start, be slower, kinder and nicer in general to others and maybe even myself. Now THAT’S a unique concept!

P.S. Sammy Sammy, I promised you and Mama a good blog. Hope this covers it. Cheers to Malawi and all of the good that’s going to come from that trip!