Patriotic Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries

I haven't been feeling 100% for the past few days which has kept me from doing much cooking (hence an entire week without a recipe and nary a post, for which I apologize).  We did make the copycat recipe of Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches for dinner Friday night, and I will be sharing the recipe and results hopefully tomorrow.  I had plans for a few different Fourth of July-inspired foods to make over the weekend, and due to whatever bug I picked up, I just couldn't talk myself into it.  I did want to do something, however.  I ran across this idea for Red, White & Blue Strawberries over at Oopsey Daisy.  They're really easy and very cute!

I poured some "4th of July Blue" colored sugar (picked up in the Dollar Spot at Target) in a small bowl, and then inserted toothpicks into the cap-end of about 1 pint of fresh, clean strawberries.  Then I melted half a bag of Ghirardelli white chocolate chips and 1/2 T. of shortening in the microwave, stirring at 30 second intervals.  I dipped the strawberries 2/3-3/4 of the way in the melted chocolate, and then set them on waxed paper to set.  Once set, I used the back of a small spoon to smooth a very thin coat of chocolate on the bottom 1/4-1/3 of the strawberries, and then dipped that in the colored sugar.  Originally, I dipped straight from the chocolate to the sugar, but it was causing a little "bubble" or roll around the middle where the sugar stopped.  This worked out a lot better asthetically.  Taste-wise - run wild however you want!