July 4th marks Independence Day in the United States – a day to celebrate all things American. For many this means taking the week off and enjoying a long-deserved family vacation, summer barbecues and of course, fireworks.

No matter how you plan on celebrating the 4th of July holiday, your Nokia phone should be by your side to help you plan your party and capture memories to share all summer long.

How do you become ready to rock the 4th with your Nokia Lumia 710 or Lumia 900? Let’s take a tour of some fun apps and services to help us.

Deck your phone out

Everyone likes to personalize their phone with a cool background. However, finding an image and then getting it transferred, formatted correctly and set can be a chore. This is where background apps come in to play.

My favorite is called Background Wallpapers, and as you can guess by the name, it’s an app tailored to bringing you background images to your Lumia. The app is completely free and allows you to browse and install tens of thousands of backgrounds that look great the Lumia’s ClearBlack display-enabled screen.

There’s a handy search function where I easily found stunning cool fireworks backgrounds by simply searching for “fireworks”. Install the background of your choice and impress your friends with your cool Independence Day-inspired shot.

Plan your party

4th of July celebrations almost always involve outdoor barbeques, but how are you supposed to know what the weather will be like and what to cook for the party?  Let’s dig in to some cool apps that will help you plan in style.

My favorite weather app I just discovered is called AmazingWeather. This app is attractive, simple and informative – exactly how a weather app should be. It has 3 themes you can choose amongst and includes current weather conditions such as temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity sunrise and sunset and a 5 day overview.

So, for July 4th, this app will not only tell you how to dress, it will tell you what time sundown will be so you can plan your fireworks displays accordingly.

AmazingWeather has a metro theme with two shades or a realistic theme that has amazing animations. Live tile support is included and the tile looks great on your home screen.  This app is $1.49 and there is a lite version that has ads and the live tile will refresh every 24 hours.

Switching gears to food, let’s look at AllRecipes.  Sure, Epicurious gets a lot of attention from foodies, but AllRecipes is an amazing resource that any cook should look to when he or she needs guidance. The thousands of recipes, ranging from desserts to appetizers to main courses, are all available in the app along with reviews and photos.

Have a picky eater to entertain on the 4th? Use the meal spinner to help come up with ideas. Also, for you social types, you can easily share recipes to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook or via email.

Capturing the moment

If you’re like most Lumia owners, you shoot a lot of video and photos. If you like to capture videos and want to make them available for others to see, consider the Vimeo application. Vimeo is similar to YouTube, but a little more professional…in that, there aren’t as many videos of skateboarding dogs.

Vimeo is an excellent app for uploading your videos to the popular Vimeo service. You can also manage your videos, including deleting and replacing existing ones. Vimeo can en handle the HD video shot on your Lumia phone – which is an added bonus.

Need inspiration to produce a cool video? You can browse existing channels of quality videos and like, comment on and add videos to your Watch Later queue.

How will you be celebrating Independence Day? Which apps will you be using to make sure the day goes off well?

 Photo credit: macgodbrad and Patrick Hoesly