My daughter turns 11 today! December birthday’s can be tough, especially now that she’s a tween (or is that pre-teen?). It’s a challenge to separate birthday from Christmas, as documented a couple years ago in the “How to make a December Birthday Special” post. But she’s older now, and I really need to step up my mom-game.
I wanted to surprise her, so I’m tweaking her room while she’s at school. Yes, we recently designed her room when we moved earlier this year, as document in the “A Blue Tween Room for Girls.” Remember this room? –>
Because she loves art and has a passion (understatement) for horses, we found her a lovely horse painting from HomeGoods as inspiration.
[click to continue…]
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you probably know that I subscribe to a “less is more” approach to decorating – both in terms of dollars spent and clutter avoided. This year we have a new home to decorate, but I purposely kept the holiday decor simple yet again. And you may recognize a few elements from my Christmas Decor post from two years ago – I didn’t spend a penny on anything new this year (except for $12.50 to dress up the lion statues out front)!
Let’s start in the family room. In keeping with the birch tree color palate for this room, we traded out the earthy orange accents for festive red! By having such a neutral base, the accent color can change seasonally, just like leaves on a birch tree!
[click to continue…]
I wonder what my neighbors really think!
It all started with a fun gift idea for some diva friends… “everything but the booze” for some fun, peppermint holiday refreshments. I wanted to include some festive drink recipes along with the gift set so I did some intensive research and found these four pretty amazing recipes. Although I haven’t tried them all (yet), but these receipes look promising!
Now if you do try any of them, please report back (if you can still type and see your monitor clear enough) and let me know which one you tried. Or, if you have a winner you’ve enjoyed, please share with the rest of us!
(Note: to see the gift idea I put together for my diva friends, scroll to the bottom…but if you’re one of my diva friends expecting a gift…don’t peek!)
Without further adieu, here are my top four picks (it was supposed to be 3, but I couldn’t help myself):
Candy Cane Martini
With a domain like Candycanemartini.com, I expect this is a winner. It looks pretty good and simple to make!
Ingredients:
- 3/4 oz Peppermint Schnapps
- 3/4 oz Creme de Cacao
- 1/4 oz Grenadine
- 1/4 oz Half & Half
- a splash of 7-Up
[click to continue…]
I’m not putting up a Christmas tree this year. There. I said it.
No, I’m not skipping Christmas. But we’re moving shortly afterwards and I’m simply out of holiday bandwith to make it happen. But with kids in the house, I have to make SOMETHING happen, so I’m letting our mantel display serve as our tree this year.
I hung little white lights on the decorative screen already over the mantel, and added in colorful ornaments for a little splash. Add two stockings, and voila…a tree (of sorts) that won’t even shed needles. The whole thing took 10 minutes.
[click to continue…]
