Happy 4th of July! It’s ok if I jump the gun a little bit right? I’m pretty sure the festivities (4 nights of rodeo) start tomorrow night here anyway.
The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I love the enthusiasm for it here in my hometown. The flags all over the place. So many events to pick and choose however we want to celebrate. And the red, white and blue – one of my favorite color combinations. So, when it worked out that it’s my mom’s turn to host our Bunco group right after the 4th of July we were really excited to put together the prizes. And what better for a 4th of July/summer theme than food-related gift baskets?!
The prizes are supposed to range in cost from about $12 to $24 so all five of these gift basket ideas are under $25. As a fun twist we not only stuck to a summer food/dinner theme but tried to incorporate as much of the red, white and blue patriotic theme as we could find. With the 24th of July Pioneer Days celebration here in Utah, we keep the red, white and blue out the entire month of July 😉
My favorite basket would have to be our picnic themed one. We found this adorable insulated picnic basket to use as the base for the gift (from TJ Maxx). I love that it’s red, white and blue colors but flower-patterned instead of stars and stripes so you can use it any time of year. We filled the basket with patriotic themed picnic supplies – paper plates, napkins, those adorable red mason jar drinking cups with straws, a vinyl tablecloth, and red, white and blue tortilla chips to finish it off.
What’s summer without ice cream, right? We just had to do an ice cream themed basket but the kind of base to use for the theme was a bit of a sticking point. In the end we went with a basket of sand toys – ice cream and the beach works great, right? The little sand strainer was the perfect thing to lift the items up so you can seem them above the top of the basket. The basket is filled with an ice cream scoop, ice cream cones and waffle bowls, and a selection of toppings like chocolate and caramel syrup, marshmallow cream, and of course, some red white and blue sprinkles.
With all of the free concerts in the park, drive-ins, or those fun DIY back yard movie theaters that summer has to offer, we went with a popcorn theme for our third basket. This one was also a good fit for our least expensive gift basket since it doesn’t take a lot to make this one cute. We grabbed a blue popcorn bowl for the base and smaller individuals bowls in red, then added some microwave popcorn and a selection of popcorn seasonings.
Our local grocery store always has these great hot dog roasting sticks in stock and we knew we wanted to use these for one of the gifts (I have a set and we use them ALL the time). The tricky part was figuring out how to package up something so long and skinny. In the end we went a similar route as the ice cream but instead of sand toys we tied everything to a children’s bat and ball set (baseball and hotdogs – totally works). We also added a set of hot dog baskets (red, white, and blue!) like you would get at the drive-in, condiment squirt bottles and a container of potato chips.
For our final gift basket we went with a back yard grilling/BBQ theme. The container is a plastic water pitcher to which we added some grilling tools, kebab baskets, corn on the cob holders, a grill brush with some barbeque sauce and a marinade, and a lighter.
I can’t decide which one I would like to win – can you? 😉 I can’t wait for our Bunco party, but first I’m going to enjoy the fireworks this weekend.
alaynascreations 
