We work at an office where people love to celebrate birthdays, usually with food.  Someone almost always brings in cake, brownies and/or cookies in honor of their co-worker’s special day.  A friend at work got creative for one birthday celebration and brought fruit, artfully arranged on wooden skewers.  I have been copying her Fruit Kabob idea ever since.

You can find the skewers at any grocery store, usually near grilling items or kitchen supplies. 

Sometimes these wooden skewers will splinter, in which case, don’t use it.  Nothing says “Happy Birthday!” like a splinter in your tongue.

I like to vary the fruit by color on the skewer so they look pretty and coordinated (yes, Dan thinks it’s weird that I take the placement of fruit by color so seriously).  I started with red grapes, but for some reason did not take any pictures of them.  Next up, green honeydew melon.

Then red strawberry.

Pineapple for a shot of yellow.

This is the first time I used blackberries.  I would use them again.

More red — watermelon.

This is also the first time I used kiwi.  It was a little more difficult to slide onto the skewer without breaking.  But it looked cool and tasted good.

And another red grape on the end for a little symmetry (no OCD here).  In the background you can see the disposable tray used to store and transport the Kabobs.  This size will hold 2 layers of Kabobs.  We made these Kabobs the night before the Balloon Festival, with every intention of meeting our friends there bright and early the next morning.

The balloons take off so early that the sun isn’t even fully up yet (see the sunrise glow in the bottom right corner).  So early, in fact, that we didn’t quite make it this year.  And by “quite make it,” I mean we were driving there after the balloons had already done their thing and our friends had already left!  Oops.  Luckily, we have these pictures from last year.  And it was lucky for our co-workers, who got treated to (surprisingly still fresh) Fruit Kabobs on Monday morning…

There are lots of different novelty balloons at the festival.  A dragon (I think).  Or dinosaur maybe?

Buffalo head.

Loved the jack-in-the-box.

But the flower might have been my favorite.  So cute.

The red balloon flew right over our heads, pretty close.

Close enough to get a money shot of the flame inside.  You could hear the flame thing make a whoosh sound when they flew over.

This one flew right over us too.

Directly overhead.  (Other than a little cropping to center the shot, I didn’t edit this photo at all.  That’s really what the colors looked like).

Finally, this amazing photo was taken by the daughter of one of our friends at work.  She volunteers on the crew of one of the balloon pilots and captured this moment on Sunday morning of this year’s festival.  She says that the weather was so calm that they “sat” the balloons on the pond for at least 15 minutes.  Awesome.  (Thanks to Shelly and her daughter Jenny for the beautiful photo!)  The balloon festival is a really fun and different way to spend a weekend morning, and we’ll be setting our alarm extra early next year.