summer archives • Offbeat Home & Life

Super sweet host & hostess gifts to bring to all your summer parties and BBQs

You’re probably lining up a whole lot of BBQs, summer parties, and general merriment now that the weather’s finer and we’re all in vacay mode (even if we’re just dreaming about it!). The best way to ensure that you keep getting an invite to those swankier parties is to bring a host/ess gift. They’re putting work into hosting and feeding y’all, so it’s a nice gesture.

Here are some of my favorite ways to say, “thanks for letting me eat, drink, and be merry with you!”

My new obsession: Gigantic beach blankets shaped like food!

Remember just about every summer when I freak out about amazingly ridiculous rafts? Well, once this one got made, I realized that nothing will ever be better than that. So now I have a new obsession: Gigantic beach blankets shaped like food!

Now let’s feast on delicious beach blankets…

Stop everything and look at this Cookie Monster bikini

Just look at it looking at you. It’s totally staring right into your cookie-slaying soul, and saying, “you know you need this in your life. You didn’t even know I existed until today, but now that you do… the whole world just seems to make sense again.”

Easy tomato recipes as seen on @offbeathome

Use up all those summer tomatoes with these easy tomato recipes

If you grow your own tomatoes or simply snag them from your local grocer or farmer’s market, you know that our love affair is almost over. Soon it will be fall and we’ll be rolling around like dogs in pumpkin puree instead. So we need to celebrate the summer ~~fruit~~ ~~veggie~~ fruit(?) that is… the luscious tomato. Here are three of my favorite easy tomato recipes to use up your summer supply.

Ain’t no shame in the calorie counting game: How to erase guilty feelings about eating at parties!

It’s the start of the summer party season for the US. Which means tons of BBQ meat, beers, margaritas and CAKE! You can’t have a party without cake! The perfect time for all that anxiety in your gut to start rising up about your food choices, and just how “good” you’ve been the last weeks. (I’ll talk in a minute about how “being good” actually means nothing, by the way.) But if you’re like me, and have made the choice to start logging your food intake, calorie counting and parties can lead to a lot of anxiety.