Valentine's Day Treats

Instead of blowing money on an overpriced restaurant meal last Valentine's Day, I made my husband heart-shaped peanut butter French toast instead. It was a fun way to start the day and I'd love to repeat the experience, though what's the fun in having the same thing again? So I'm on the hunt for something equally fun and delicious to surprise him with this year. Here are some of my favorite treats so far. They all look yummy!

Doily-shaped cheese with Ritz crackers and strawberries

 Heart-shaped Rice Krispies treats

Heart Fruit Kabobs - pineapple, canteloupe, and watermelon.

LOVE pancakes. Easy to do with a batter dispenser. 

Holiday Wreath for 2014

It's no secret that the best time to do holiday shopping is the day after Christmas. Call me crazy, but I just can't pass up a good sale and our local Michael's craft store had some excellent deals this year. Sadly, many of their sale items were heavily picked over by the time my mom and I arrived at the store, but we still found some things that made it worth the trip.

Somehow I got it into my mind that I would create a silver and purple holiday wreath for our church for use next year and lo and behold, a few bags of floral goodies and several glue sticks later, my dream came to life. Here's how it progressed:

After I'd picked out the wreath fillers at Michaels, I came home and arranged them sans glue to see how they would look.

I couldn't find silver pointsettias so I used white ones instead and added silver glitter
around the center. 

Then I used silver spray paint on the filler items I found so that they'd go with the color palette.

The finished product!

Apple's Holiday Win

As a self-described "techie" and marketing maven, I have great respect for the creative minds behind Apple's ads. In fact, I can't recall ever disliking any of their commercials and this year is no exception. If you haven't seen "Misunderstood," take a look here. I watched it with my hubby and neither one of us had dry eyes when it was over. Apple, you never cease to delight!

Celebrating Fall

I had the foresight to decorate our front porch for the fall season before the boys arrived. I'm so glad I did! For the sake of saving precious free time (which I have little of these days), I went with a theme that we can keep up over Halloween and Thanksgiving. Done and done.

It sort of seems silly to be excited about such a trivial thing as fall decorations, but I'm quickly discovering that any "me time" activities that I can squeeze in throughout the day help keep me sane. Oh, the joys of motherhood! :)

Romantic Breakfast

Hello, readers!  For all of the romantics out there, happy Valentine's Day! Here's what I treated the hubby to this morning:

Romantic French Toast:

• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 tbsp. of creamy peanut butter
• 8 pieces of bread
• Butter for frying
• powdered sugar for sprinkling
• Heart-shaped cookie cutter

Cut the bread in heart shapes. Discard leftover pieces. You should have 8 hearts when you're finished. On 4 of the hearts, spread the peanut butter. About 1 tbsp. of it per heart. Fold together with remaining heart shapes to form little sandwiches.

Mix together the first 6 ingredients above in a bowl. Dip the sandwiches into the mixture and place into a warmed fry pan with melted butter. Cook until desired firmness is achieved. Sprinkle with powdered sugar just before serving.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2013 everyone!

We'll be staying home and doing what we usually do on New Year's Day: building puzzles in our pajamas and sharing snacks and cocktails. This year, this ginger champagne cocktail from Martha Stewart is on our to-do list. Doesn't it sound delicious?  How will you be celebrating the first day of the new year?

Ginger Sparkler

2 teaspoons of peeled, finely grated ginger
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup of water
1 bottle of Prosecco or Champagne

In a small saucepan, boil the ginger, sugar and 1/4 cup of water until syrupy (or for 2 minutes). Pour contents through a sieve over a small bowl. Discard solids.

Pour 1 tablespoon of syrup into a glass and fill with champagne. Gently stir then serve. Cheers!

Making the Holidays Merry

With our holiday shopping completed and no concrete plans ahead other than traveling to St. Louis for Christmas, I thought perhaps this last week or two might have been a bit slow. I thought wrong! I've been busy completing all those unfinished projects I blogged about last week (more on that later). I've also been preoccupied with fun little holiday gatherings. We hosted a young adults game night for church friends on Saturday, a holiday gift exchange with my parents on Sunday, and later today we'll be getting together with our neighbors to share a few drinks and some holiday cheer. Keeping busy this time of year is actually kind of fun!

My parents, nephew, sister, hubby and I all gathered around our tree. 

One of several Christmas baskets I made for our neighbors.

It was my first attempt at making gift baskets. Not bad, but practice makes perfect.

Simple DIY Gift Ideas on Pinterest

I found this "10 Simple DIY Gift Ideas" guide on Mashable and some of these ideas were just too cute not to share. My favorites are below, but there's a lot to choose from for anyone in the do-it-yourself gift-giving mode this year.

I love these adorable jelly jars with painted animal lids. 

Men's old dress shirts find new purpose with these wine bottle holders. 

Apple Crisp - The Shocking Results

So it turns out that I can cook a pretty delicious apple crisp! As promised, here are the pictures from my little baking adventure yesterday. The apple coring and slicing takes a long time, but it's so worth it. I cranked up the Christmas music, put on an apron and got to work and an hour or so later, I had a warm, gooey dessert that practically changed my life it was so good. Highly recommend this recipe!

It took everything I had not to eat the apples raw like this. Don't they look good?

This is what the crisp looked like just before going into the oven. A whole lotta brown sugar and oats.

The result, fresh out of the oven.  The scoop of vanilla ice cream took me over the edge. Heavenly!

Enjoying My Time Off

The hubby and I were playing a game of cribbage last night and I realized something kind of amazing about my unemployment situation: now I have A LOT of free time. There are so many little projects that I've put on hold in recent months because I was just too busy with work, the house, church or neighborhood activities, etc. Now I have all the time in the world to focus on them. In fact, I'm going to tackle one unfinished project every day until I'm gainfully employed again. Why not, right? 

So what's first on my list?  Today it's a combination of things. I'm going to hang Christmas lights on our front porch, using a ladder, a staple gun, and any other dangerous tools the job calls for. After that, I'm finally going to get this apple crisp recipe pulled together. I've been salivating over it for weeks and it just sounds like the right thing to eat on a cold winter day. If it turns out okay, I'll share pictures with you!

Ta-da!  (Let's hope I can do a better job than this.)

Sheet Music Christmas Trees

Holy Craft has a quick and easy way for bringing a little bit of old world charm to your holiday decorating with the use of sheet music. Personally, I've been wanting to add some miniature Christmas trees to my existing holiday decorations, but they're so darn expensive. I like this idea because it's much cheaper and you can use songs that mean something to you for a more personal touch. If songs aren't your thing, I bet you could use holiday wrapping paper as a substitute instead. Cute idea!

Holiday Apple Centerpieces

We're hosting a few holiday gatherings in the coming weeks and I'm looking for cute, cost-effective ideas for decorating our dining room table. Apple centerpieces seem to be popping up all over Pinterest this year and given the popularity of them in Washington state, I think they'd make for a great solution. Now which one to go with... I like them all!

Via Finding Home Online

Via Hanna's Charming Christmas

Unknown source

Via Tangled Up in Knots

Mixology Monday: Cranberry Cocktail

Happy Monday, readers! I'm back after a week of celebrations that included my 31st birthday,  Thanksgiving (I'm still stuffed!) and a few impromptu gatherings with neighbors and friends.  Needless to say, I'm filled with a lot of holiday cheer going into a Monday. That's gotta be a good thing, right?

So let's get back to it, shall we?  If you love cranberry, you'll love this cocktail from Meyers Styles. You can adjust the quantities as needed, but here's a good place to start:

• 2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. peach schnapps
• 3 oz. Cranberry juice
• A dash of fresh lime juice
• Fresh mint or cranberries for garnish 

Mason Jar Soap Dispenser

If you have a farmhouse/country style when it comes to decorating, you'll love this project. Our Lovely Bungalow has a great idea for making mason jar soap dispensers using thrift store finds, a can of spray paint, a hammer and a little glue. It doesn't take much to complete the transformation and this project is completely customizable. With the holidays just around the corner, I might even use red spray paint instead of white and wrap some plaid ribbon around the top of the jar to spruce it up. So many things you can do!

Recipes With Ruche

Exciting news, readers!  If any of you are familiar with a website called Ruche, you'll probably dig this news as much as I do. (Side note: if you're not familiar with Ruche, it's like Anthropologie, but you don't have to sell a kidney to come away with something nice.)

Anyhoo... they recently put together a dessert cookbook for the holidays and they selected my blog for inclusion! Specifically, they referenced a recipe that I shared with you last year for a delicious, gluten-free almond orange cake.  If you love sweets, take a peek below. There are tons of fabulous recipes to flip through!

    

A Cause for Celebration

I hope you had an awesome Halloween, readers! As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Mike and I opted to stay in this year in favor of greeting trick-or-treaters. Sadly, we only had a few. More to the point, this was the first year that we didn't dress up in a costume and go out and celebrate so in some small way, I was a little bit disappointed at the end of the night. But why?

When I thought about it, I realized that I'm still a little bit of a kid when it comes to this holiday. All holidays for that matter. I love the idea of going out with a bang in whatever I do to celebrate them. As corny as it sounds, I think life is simply too short not to seize every opportunity for celebration.

So you know what I say? While the world might demand that I think and behave as my age dictates, I'm never going to let go of that little child-like piece of me that still looks for the sense of wonder and fun in every day and dangit, I'm going to celebrate it!

Caption courtesy of Little Tree Vintage

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, readers!

Now that Mike and I are settled in a house, we're bound to have trick-or-treaters at our door so we're staying put for the evening. In keeping with the spirit of the holiday, I'll be making this delicious taco dip for us to share and pairing it with a glass of pumpkin ale. Low key and loving it. 

Will you or your family be dressing up? Whatever you do, enjoy yourselves!

Weekend Wrap-Up

I don't know about you guys, but I did a whole lotta living over the weekend and I'm feeling pooped going into this week.  It's definitely a multiple cup coffee morning, which feels about right going into a Monday.

Tiredness aside, it was a fantastic weekend filled with friends, family and holiday festivities. One of the standout highlights for me was a trip to Craven Farm to pick out our Halloween pumpkins for carving. The farm itself is adorable and a lot of families came dressed up in their Halloween costumes, which was a hoot for people watching. They also have a fun slingshot tool that you can use to send miniature pumpkins flying into space (see video below). We will absolutely make this pumpkin patch visit a family tradition when we have kids someday. It's so fun!

The friendliest pumpkin farm on the planet!

Craven Farm's corn fields looked gorgeous against the stormy sky.  

They had so many pumpkins to choose from and all of them were huge!

We settled on a short and tall combination. Kudos to hubby for doing the heavy lifting.

Wicked Witches Legs

I love this Halloween-themed treat idea from Sweetology. It's a simple mix of paper, tape, plastic wrap and Oreo cookies and no baking or glue is required. I love the easy stuff! This idea works across other holidays as well (think: santa boots and red/green Oreos for Christmas treats).

Easy Halloween Boa Wreath

Who cares if it's only October 3rd? I'm getting into the Halloween spirit this week with decorations.

I love this idea from Simply This and That featuring a wreath made out of a black boa and Halloween knick-knacks picked up from Michaels. It sounds like it only takes minutes to make which means I may have a fun craft project on my hands this week! (I'll be sure to post results.)