Since my [insert older] son loves it when I decorate the house for an occasion, I thought I would make the most of the upcoming festivities. My son sometimes watches a show called Team Umizoomi and they had an episode about a special “I Love You Day”, so between that and school, I think Valentine will actually mean something to him this year.

So here are some great ideas for a modern Valentine Day celebration, with many simple DIY ideas:

all photo credits of their respectives sites

Clockwise from top left:

Heart Garland from here; Glitter Banner from here; Red table setting from here; Valentine bubbles from here; Sweet Treats from here; XOXO cupcakes from here; Cupid’s Arrow Brownies from here.

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving.  It’s one of those holidays that seems to have withstood becoming overly commercial (excluding Black Friday).  This year, unlike in years past, we are actually going out of town, which is not something to be underestimated with two little ones under the age of five.  But at the time we booked it seemed like a good idea to go up to San Francisco and spend Thanksgiving with my brother and his wife, and let them play hosts this year.

That said, I’m a sucker for entertaining and decorating for the holidays, so I still managed put together a Thanksgiving Inspiration Board, even though we are not hosting.  Our Thanksgiving will be small, as our family is small, but the food will be delicious.  Above are some cute ideas for decorating your home and some neat recipes with an autumnal flair, that while not “traditional”, still manage to capture the spirit of the season.

Since we are a small family, we will be opting for a chicken instead of Turkey.  The recipe for the chicken is not just for any roast chicken.  It’s a Thomas Keller roast chicken, and frankly the best roast chicken I’ve tasted!  Unlike conventional roasting recipes, his requires no basting, but relies on a generous amount of salt to keep the bird juicy and flavorful. The sweet potato French Fries are for my oldest son, who hates “mushy” food.  I don’t blame him, he spent the better part of his early years eating only purees, so I’m not surprised he likes texture and crunch.  The pear salad is for me, as I love the idea of making a salad tower.  And, last but not least, the “horns of plenty” are so cute and such an easy cheat using waffle ice cream cones and a bounty of fresh fruit that I would be remiss not to include something so pretty, so easy and so healthy.

Photos are copyright of their respective owners, follow the links for each:

1. Autumn Basket

2. Welcoming Entry

3. Pumpkin Centerpiece

4. Thomas Keller Roast Chicken, BTW- this site is full of gorgeous recipes. Too bad the author decided to discontinue blogging.

5. Fresh Fruit Cones. (unfortunately for these there is no link to the original source.  let me know if you come across one as I would prefer to give credit).

6. Crispy Sweet Potato Fries

7. Vertical Pear and Walnut Salad

Lastly, here are some nice FREE Printables to dress up your festivities that you can download here:

Wishing you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I used some of the ideas from my inspiration board, but also came up with other things.  Here are the details:

For food I tried to keep it semi-healthy.  While I love the look of a dessert table covered with candy a la Amy Atlas, the truth is I and most parents I know don’t really love our kids to be full of sugar.  So for the sweet stuff, besides the cake, I had cupcakes, fossil cookies and grapes in individual cups. For the savory stuff, I had individual cones of Veggie Booty (my son’s fave), mini cups of edamame, and cups with julienned vegetables, some with ranch dip, some without… and of course pizza which seems compulsory for a kids party.  I served the latter because most kids eat it, but funnily enough my son doesn’t.   The cupcake toppers were created using a template from Paper and Cake on etsy.  Then for the fossil cookies I decided to make it super easy on myself and bought ready made sugar cookie dough which I just baked normally, then when the cookies were still warm from the oven I pressed a dinosaur form into them.  Presto! Dino fossil cookies without much fuss, but they looked great on the table.  I also served chocolate milk in cute vintage-y glass bottles and paper straws from Sweet Lulu.

For fun, I had a bouncy castle, but since there could only be 5-6 kids in there at a time, I figured I needed other activities.  I had a “decorate a dino” station, with ready made cut out shapes of different dinos, and buckets of stickers and googley eyes.  This station was a hit with the girls who were more into the crafting aspect.  I also had the requisite “dino dig”.  I filled two galvanized metal buckets with play sand and buried dinosaur skeletons into each of them.  Kids then dug them out using sifters and brushes, like mini paleontologists.  I’d seen different sites with how-to make your own dino bones, etc, but again I opted for the quickest route since time is not always readily available with a little one just a few months old.  I bought a Dino Excavation Kit from Lakeshore Learning, it had the skeletons and the sifters and the brushes.  My twist on the dig is that each dino had a number inscribed on it and the number matched a prize in a big bin I had next to the dino dig.  As I told some of the parents at the party, as a child I was not one to dig for digging’s sake, so I wanted there to be a reward for the digging, it also made it into more of a game.

Lastly for the goodie bags, everyone left with personalized bags filled with dino loot.  From dino stickers, dinosaur toy and a treat bag filled with chocolate rocks and a mini dinosaur, topped off with a matching tag.  Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the the dino chocolate rock bags, but I heard back from some parents and I know they were well received. Imagine eating rocks, how cool

Happy Birthday my big boy!  Hope it was memorable.

p.s. My son’s personalized T-shirt was from Priceless Kids yet another etsy vendor.

Last year we hosted an art party, this year I’m going with a dinosaur theme.  Cars, trucks, etc are still my son’s favorite, but this last year he discovered the world of dinosaurs through one of his favorite shows on Nick Jr., Dino Dan.  In one episode Dan has a birthday party and, of course, it was a dinosaur party.  Ever since then I’ve been planning on throwing my son a dinosaur party, so I’ve been surfing the internet and I’ve found some great ideas/resources.  Here are some that I’m planning on taking inspiration from:

Clockwise from the top:  chocolate milk bottles from here; edible fondant dino cake toppers from here; dino party hats from here; dino terrarium from here; pin the hat on the dino from here; dino excavation from here;  fossil cookies from here; molten lava cakes from here.

Clockwise from the top: Cool Banner from here, Firework fans from here,  Sparklers from here,  Photobooth props from here, Snack cones from here, July 4 Sweet Treat from here, Watermelon Limeade from here, Patriotic Wreath from here.

July 4 free printables here

While I love seeing real fireworks, I also hate packing myself into a crowd just to get a lousy view, that’s why I love the idea of the sparklers and I know my older son will love them too.  Also, there aren’t any real “July 4″ activities, besides hanging out in the backyard and barbecuing and maybe throwing a football, so I think the idea of a photo booth with July 4 specific props is genius.

Happy Fourth!

1) Banner

This banner is very similar in idea to the one in the inspiration board, but I didn’t buy it.  I made it using digital papers that I recently started to acquire, as I try my hand at digital scrapbooking.  (I’ve always found the idea of scrapbooking fun, but with all the little pieces you accumulated, never wanted to attempt; digital scrapbooking is much more my style… no mess.  Go here if you want to check out some cool resources.)

2) Candy Topiaries

Again, I took direct inspiration from my board.  In my case I used $1 buckets I’d previously bought at Target, as my containers, along with 3 inch styrofoam balls and wood dowells from Michael’s, and last but not least, candy from the dollar store. Pretty cheap project for something that looks this good.  The only thing I will say is that the process is much more tedious and time consuming than I had anticipated.  But once I got started, I had to finish… I’m a follow-through sort of person.  I’m really pleased with the result, I just hope I can store these in such a way that the candy doesn’t disintegrated between now and next Easter, as I wont be repeating this project.

3) Favors

This was more of a repackaging project.  I bought some cute chocolate chicks from the dollar store, three for $1, and repackaged them in cellophane bags tied up with a pretty ribbon.  Super easy, super fast and I already had the ribbon and bags, so it was also super cheap.  I like when guests can leave the celebration with something, especially kids.  It always makes them happy when they say goodbye, so a little treat can go a long way.

4) Cupcakes

I just made some vanilla cupcakes and added in some colored sprinkles, so that the splatters of color would appear as you bite through the cake.  I also colored my frosting in three different colors to make them look more Easter-y.  I still need to master the art of frosting.  I can do a Magnolia Bakery style frosting finish, but that was too much effort for mini cupcakes, so I just topped them with these cute cupcake toppers bought last year on sale (after Easter) at Williams-Sonoma.

I’ll be keeping the banner and hoping to keep the topiaries, that way next year I can just add to what we already have.

Hope you had a great Easter!

Easter Subway Art via here

Easter chicks via here, with many more options once you go there, including banners.

Happy Easter via here

A friend of ours used to make delicious, crumbly holiday cookies which she dubbed “Snowball Cookies”, but once she went on a master cleanse diet and started to eat primarily raw food, that annual treat became a thing of the past.  So I set out on a mission to find/recreate them, even though she was unwilling to part with the recipe.  The picture above is of the Snowball Cookies that my family and I made this year, as presents for teachers and relatives in far away places.  Personally I prefer to share recipes and share the yummy-ness, so here goes.

The recipe is adapted from Williams Sonoma’s Mexican Wedding Cookies. (Makes about 4 dozen)

1 cup unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar (sifted)

1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

1 3/4 all-purpose flour (sifted)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup ground pecans

1/4 cup ground blanched almonds

Pre-heat oven to 350°F.  In a large  bowl, using an electric mixer on high speed, cream the butter until fluffy, then add 1/2 cup of the confectioners’ sugar.  Continue beating until light and fluffy, add the vanilla extract and the salt.  Slowly add the flour and cinnamon to the butter mixture, mixing at low speed.  Stir in the ground nuts.

Cover and refrigerate.  The original recipe calls for 15 minutes of chilling, but I found that with 30 minutes, the cookies maintained a more spherical shape.  Granted the dough is harder to work with, but if a snowball look is what you are after, the extra minutes are worth it.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls.  Place about 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets.  I like to line my sheets with parchment paper.

Bake the cookies until just golden brown on the bottom, 10-13 minutes depending on your oven.  Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes, then roll them one at a time in the remaining confectioners’ sugar.  Let cool completely on wire racks.

The cookies on their own are surprisingly unsweet, but once rolled in the sugar, they get a wonderful sweet coating.  Before serving on a cookie platter, dust some additional confectioner’s sugar, for that freshly fallen powder snow look and enjoy.

If like most of the country you are either snowed in, or rained in as is the case here in Los Angeles, this is a wonderful thing to do with your little ones.  My son loves to bake, and he especially loves to turn on the electric mixer.  What a nice way to celebrate the holidays together.

What’s more is that most of the gift selections are from small brands and boutiques, with many handmade items that make gift giving more unique and meaningful.

It’s also full of decorating and DIY ideas, which as you know is right up my street, when I choose to channel my inner hostess.  Some of the craft ideas can even be done with kids, which is a great way to get them involved and get them in the spirit of the holidays.

From picking the perfect gifts, to pretty packages, and halls decked with cheer, Gifted will fill you with inspired ideas.

Last year we hosted a little bash at the Petersen Car Museum, and while the museum and the venue where great, it was perhaps not ideal as a co-ed party.  So this year I wanted his party to be girl-friendly. The art party inspired a Jackson Pollock “scribble zone”, an Andy Warhol “soup can target”, and a “Framed” self-portrait area complete with dress up clothes.   I doubt he’ll remember this party when he’s older, but he’ll have the images to look back on.