Happy 4th Of Sparkling July

This year for the fourth of July, we wanted to go to Princess Ones to celebrate Grand-Prince One's first birthday but we weren't sure we were going to be able to head to their house and visit as we have play practices daily so we figured out that we wouldn't have time to make the drive to visit and spend any time there.


I have a few friends visiting from out of state so we are going to spend some time with them at another friends home. We get to see Princess Two tomorrow but the rest of the girls are doing stuff with friends or extended family.

Princess Five knew a friend she made at a camp a few years back was coming to our town to visit her grandparents over the fourth so Princess invited her over to spend the day. The had some fun and then the girl went back to spend time with her family but they made a plan to get together after dark so that they could do some sparkler art.

We have had a few sparkler photo shoots over the years, here is a link to the first. Here is a link to one in winter over new years.

She came over and she and Princess Four did a few tries at writing USA and a star but Princess Five likes making really large letters and they would run into each other or out of the frame of the camera.

They wanted a picture of the two of them showing but with the sparklers showing so we at first tried a flash. The sparklers were less than exciting with the flash. Then, we tried without flash and it was so dark it was just sparklers.

The girls then learned that the slower they wrote the letters, the more "sparkly" and thick the letters are. If you take a step to the side after each letter, you can avoid the overlap.

In the past, we had them write the letters backwards which is what they did with the USA picture and in the past with all our "sparkler" shoots but today I had an idea of having them kneel down and write with the sparkler over their head in normal direction so the words would be easier to spell. I also told them to hold the sparkler sideways so that their hands weren't over the light making the words.

I found that it worked well. It is easier to write in the direction we do write and move the letters left to right and not overlap as when writing backwards, it is hard to determine the right spacing.

We tried again to get a picture of their faces and sparklers so we stuck a porch light on and took the picture right above with the light which shows their faces and sparklers but then I put the flash on and held my hand over it a little and got the last picture. It shows the sparkler and them and is quite cute.