Easy Grilled Pizza Night

This is easily one of my favorite summer meals, because it's so fun, easy, and tasty! 

It's our go-to for lazy Friday nights, weeks full or work travel, or even entertaining. 

The menu is simple: wine, spinach artichoke dip, and take and bake pizza!

Since we eat almost every meal on the deck in the summer, I keep a tray in the kitchen to carry everything outside in one trip.  It makes it easy to carry everything back in too!

 

Step one: Open the wine. Then I put on some music, snuggle into the deck pillows and let my husband take over the grilling!

Protocolo is my favorite type of wine to have with grilled pizza, so I stock-up during the summer since we have this meal a lot!  

For an appetizer, we bake one of my spinach artichoke dips on the grill. I make a bunch at a time and freeze them in tin foil pans, so all we have to do is take them out of the freezer in the morning to defrost and they're ready to grill!

We serve the spin dip with Naan bread, which we buy at Costco and heat right on the grill.  

When the naan is ready we cut it with the pizza cutter and serve it off of the pizza plate--why dirty more dishes!

We buy take-and bake pizzas from the grocery store to grill. They always have different kinds to try: buffalo chicken, BBQ chicken, even BLT pizza.

  

The pizzas we buy can be grilled right in the pan they come in, otherwise we use a pizza pan wrapped in tin foil for easy clean-up.

See why I love easy grilled pizza night?!?!?

Cheers to Summer dinners on the deck!

Colorful Deck Flowers Hack

One of my best finds has been Costco's plant and flower baskets.  They're only $20 each which is very reasonable  even compared to plating your own, and the plants are full and overhanging so it doesn't take all summer for them to come in.  Every year I buy two for the front step and two for the deck.

This year I found some really funky plants for the deck, but I thought they lacked a pop of color. I didn't think there was room in the pots to add more flowers, so I thought I'd stick in some fake blooms (I probably couldn't keep real flowers alive anyway!)

I found these on clearance at JoAnn's and they were just the red/orange color that I wanted.  The tag said they were for indoor use only as colors would bleed, so I sprayed them with varnish before sticking them in the plant (proof I'm a better crafter than gardener).

 Before                                       After

The fake flowers are perfect for adding the pop of color that was needed. Now the deck is colorful and ready for a summer of deck sitting!