Host a Simple Patriotic Party

For my daughter’s 16th birthday, she wanted to invite a few friends over for a patriotic themed party. We kept things laid-back and simple by hosting the party outside, using minimal decorations, and serving easy, but classic Americana food.

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Decorations

The white shed was the perfect backdrop to hang a large American flag. This was a simple, but effective way to make a big patriotic impact without making our yard look like red, white, and blue exploded everywhere. And since ambient lighting makes everything feel more magical at night, we wrapped the Orange tree in leftover Christmas lights and ran string lights back and forth over the back porch.

In keeping with our simple, but classic Americana theme, we created a center piece for the table by arranging red and white tulips and blue hyacinths in a large clear jar. Then we added a few mini-flags and some patriotic themed paper products to the tabletop to bring in a few more touches of red, white, and blue.

Food

We served no-fuss, classic American food like hotdogs, watermelon wedges, cupcakes, and S’mores. Then we supplied the teens with bamboo roasting sticks and let them cook their own hotdogs for dinner and roast S’mores for dessert. This was a definite win for me because I didn’t have to cook for them! And since I was feeling a little extra festive, I even made a flag fruit kabob with blueberries, raspberries, and mini marshmallows. This simple, patriotic treat turned out to be a big hit with the teenagers that didn’t want lots of sweets. And of course, no American-themed party would be complete without serving the guests glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

Then we cranked up the country music and our daughter and her friends had a perfect evening grilling hotdogs, roasting smore’s, playing Cornhole, lighting sparklers, and hanging out around the fire pit.