Fourth of July - a beautiful day!

I have been telling you about our rainy summer for weeks now - it really has been an unusual year. Today was the first "perfect" day of the summer - just in time for the Fourth of July.



We have a traditional "Picnic in the Park" here in Concord and there was a great turnout to celebrate the holiday and the nice weather.



Lots of local clubs and non-profit groups have booths where they sell food, promote their causes, hand out information and offer items for sale. I am a member of the local quilt guild, the "Concord Piecemakers" and we usually display a quilt that has been made by many members contributing squares. We raffle the quilt to raise money to help cover costs of making quilts for donation for people in need and to support the quilt museum.



I had to laugh this year when I saw that we were in a slightly different location than usual (due to a big mud puddle) and our spot was right next to a silhouette artist! Quite a coincidence since I have spent the last day or so totally wrapped up in working with the new "A Child's Year" cartridge - I can't get enough silhouettes! (I made a lot more things this afternoon and will post them tomorrow morning - this is an amazing cartridge!).



Here is a close up view of this year's raffle quilt - it is so bright and colorful and a very talented member did the fantastic machine quilting.




Our younger son and his girlfriend stopped by on their bikes - I guess they have outgrown the "decorated bikes and baby carriages" parade that happens each year.



Several musical groups perform and everyone has a great time. There are lots of activities for the kids, bouncy castles, the police radar sign set up to time their baseball pitches, face painting and cotton candy and a chance to put out a "fire" using a real fire hose!

It is always a lot of fun and I am so glad the weather was cooperative. We didn't venture into Boston for the Boston Pops and the fireworks - we just watched them on TV from the comfort of our couch!

So Happy 4th of July! I hope you had a great day wherever you are.



One more photo - my very handy husband has the "platform" for my craftroom island done! Here he is attaching the super heavy duty wheels - this structure will handle a lot of weight (we all know how heavy paper can be - and I have a lot of paper!).

You can see my car with the "flipped" Cricut head in the background. I made it from Wall Pops and forgot that they have color only on one side so when I flipped it the sticky side was white ( I originally planned to put it on the inside of the glass). I couldn't waste it - so I put it on this way and it has been on the car nearly a year and still looks great! (I even go through the car wash with it).