Skewers of food can make party planning easy and visually appealing. Image courtesy of Pinterest via Martha McCall.

In order for party planners to have enough energy to stay awake for the fireworks, the execution of creating great foods should be simple, visually appealing, and of course, crowd-pleasing.

Here are a few quick and easy energy-saving recipe ideas:

Love the Skewers:

This can be skewers of meat and veggies for the grill, appetizers of fruit and cheese, or anything else that can be jabbed with a stick.They can be laid upon a tray, poked into a cabbage head that has been leveled by slicing a piece off the bottom, Styrofoam, or in tumblers or glasses. For more info on skewer recipes see 50 skewer recipes by The Food Network.

Arrangement of Foods

Try simply slicing red, white and blue foods and laying them in a flag, star, or whimsical pattern. For dessert, you can make an easy patriotic trifle layered with fruits,whipped cream, or pudding in a large glass bowl.

You can make truffle bites or cookie trays by adding a little food coloring or colored chocolate melts.The melts would work well with the carrot cake truffle, gingerbread cookie dough, or dip cake balls or pretzels and roll them in sprinkles. Bar cookie batters can be split into 3 parts and colored prior to baking.The same can occur for cake batters.

Easy Festive Drinks

An easy way to bring red, white and blue to your drinks is by simply freezing berries ahead  in ice cubes. Add them to lemonades, sangria, or any other beverage that would benefit.

Now that you have a few easy ideas that won’t leave your feet tired from an entire day in the kitchen, get out there and have a wonderful party! Happy 4th of July!