The First Day of July

Where has this year gone??!!??  It's already July 1st!  I'm really excited for this month.  My anniversary, the family vacation, and my birthday are all in July.  And they're all within the first half of the month.

There's so much left to do to get ready.  Grocery shopping, supply shopping and packing.  

Most people go out to dinner for their anniversaries.  Ken and I?  We perfer to cook a nice meal at home.  There are 2 reasons for this A) I'm cheap {spend $30 or $130??}  and B) Independence Day is meant to be spent grilling!

This year we are going to do something a bit easier than normal/.  We are going to get Publix to steam our shirmp so we don't have to do it.  This is our way of being "fancy" for our special day.  

Here's the rest of our menu:

Fruit Salad (fresh berries, apples, bananas, nectarines and grapes)
Sauteed Zucchini
Corn on the cob
Watermelon (you can't celebrate the day without it!)
Potato Salad
Chocolate cheesecake with a strawberry swirl

For the cheesecake I reversed THIS RECIPE and used strawberries instead of raspberries.

The following picture is one I posted to my personal Facebook page.  I am amazed that I looked decent in this "one-size-fits-all" dress.  It was actually a quite emotional thing for me.  It was a major mental win for my self-esteem.  This is the first time in my life I've been a "one-size-fits-all" girl.  I never plan on going back! 

"Today I bought this dress. Why is that amazing? Because this dress would not have fit me 4 years ago. I would have looked like a stuffed walrus in this dress. I honestly never full realized how far I've come until today. I actually have the body to wear a dress like this. Who knew that the girl who got called fat for 90% of her school years would look like this?? So this dress has finally made me realize I can say F**K YOU to all those people who ever said nasty things about me, guys that turned me down because I wasn't a size 2 and everyone who laughed at me (both behind my back and to my face.)

This might just look like a dress to everybody else but, this dress is mental freedom, this dress is empowerment, this dress is happiness."


Happy July everybody!!