Backyard Camping Party

 I love me some pinspiration. Although, I have found myself to be- how shall I put this?- very flexible in the way I follow the directions on the things I pin.  It seems the trend is that I take a look at the image and decide how I think it was made, the decide how I think I could make it using or re-purposing materials that I already have.

These tents, for example, that we made for our backyard camping party were inspired by a pin on Pinterest, but we used some scrap wood trim that our neighbor had put out on the curb "free to good home", and some of my stash hoard of vintage sheets.  We were inspired by this tutorial- though we never really read the directions...

The details:
It should come as no surprise that most of the rest of the party was put together with many items that we already had with some $1 store binoculars and thrift store woodsy art.  We also threw in some FREE found items- pine cones, branches, twigs and logs.

The food:
We had originally planned to roast s'mores over a campfire in our fire pit, but most of the state of Colorado was battling wildfires at the time, so we settled for some s'more substitutes.  I made a S'mores Mix using graham cracker cereal, tiny marshmallows and chocolate chips, and also S'mores Pops by putting a jumbo marshmallow in a stick, dipping in melted chocolate ans rolling in graham cracker crumbs.

We also served a couple of foil-wrapped favorite campfire cooking recipes made on the grill, like these meatloaf onion bombs and baked apples.  I made a pot of my favorite vegetarian chili , a pine cone cheese ball and some homemade rosemary lemonade.