July 4th table ideas ~

Ready for the holiday weekend? July 4th is one of my two favorite holidays!

I decked out the table a little early to stretch out the holiday, so I thought I’d share some low-key July 4th table setting ideas. I’ll be visiting Bluwatermom this weekend for a backyard cookout, with watermelon and ice cream {I hope!}, so my home table is set indoors.

The blue ticking table cloth and split bamboo runners have been on the table a while. Everything else is straight from the cabinet except for the $3.99 flowers from Trader Joe’s. I reused the denim pockets from this table for napkins and flatware. Can’t go wrong with blue denim, red seersucker and white daisies for the 4th! The galvanized metal chargers are new this summer from Pottery Barn.

I’ve had the red and blue flower buckets and the tin lanterns are from IKEA for years. I added some white and silver shells with the flowers and lanterns down the center of the table. There’s a quick how-to for the flowers at the end of this post. 🙂

 My two favorite holidays are July 4th and Thanksgiving. Both are 4F holidays ~ family, friends, food and fun. I don’t do much holiday decorating except Christmas, but I do like to prepare a special dish or dessert, do a table setting or add something to my door for other holidays. I’ve got a couple of recipes in mind for the weekend, and I’m enjoying my table all week. Hope you stop by next week to see the summer table set after the holiday.

Here’s the simple florist trick I used for my table flowers. It’s a great trick for using inexpensive grocery story flower bundles, especially daisies, mums, carnations or mini roses ~~~

How to create a casual round table arrangement ~

1 ~ If your container isn’t made for water {like these punched metal pails} or you want to keep the finished size of your arrangement a bit smaller than the container, add a small vase, bowl or drinking glass inside the container to hold your water and flowers.

2 ~ Create a grid across the top of your flower container {or in this case, the inside glass/vase} with clear tape to act as a “flower frog”. A standard 9 square tic-tac-toe grid is good for most round or square containers.

3 ~ Snip the individual flowers from the longer stem bunches. Keep the individual flower stems to roughly 3 lengths ~ longer, medium, shorter. Any double or triple multi-stems are good for the longest stems. A total of 24 – 26 stems works well. Place the longest stems in the center of the grid. I had some triple daisy stems that would be too short by themselves but as a multi-stems were long enough for the center.

4 ~ Trim the remaining medium and shorter stems so the stems in each group are equal length. Place the medium stems in the 4 squares surrounding the center square. Use 2 -3 stems per square, depending on the size of the blooms. Repeat with the shortest stems in the 4 corner squares, filling in the grid, again 2-3 stems per square. Your finished arrangement should be a nice, even mound of blooms. If any of the stems are a bit too long or short you can gently adjust as needed.

Hope y’all enjoy a Happy Independence Day on July 4th!