I got back to Louisville on Thursday afternoon and have been going nonstop ever since. In some ways, it’s been great to come back in time for a holiday weekend because everyone is home, but it’s been a little overwhelming because I haven’t had a chance to sit down and think. The fourth was super low key, but my sister Lauren and I decided to make it special.

I’ve lost contact with most of my high school friends and don’t usually make effort to make plans anyway while I’m at home, especially on holidays (partially for the sake of keeping my mom happy). My family didn’t have any plans this year either, but I wanted to do something at least somewhat fun to celebrate. I picked up some sparklers at Kroger for $2 and Lauren and I used them to do some super cool photography. Here’s what we came up with:

Wanna do it yourself with some discount sparklers? You need a tripod and a DSLR camera, but you just set your F stop to ~11, ISO at 100, and shutter speed at however many seconds you want to do your art. We found it was great to go outside about an hour before sunset to set everything up and practice a couple times in the light because it gets difficult to see late at night. We brought a flashlight out as well to help make sure we were in the frame.