holiday festivity napkins

Here's a festive holiday project that's also great for New Year's: embellished napkins, as seen on Momtastic. With metallic paints (the Martha Stewart line at Michael's has lots of great options) and a circular sponge brush, you can whip up a few of these for your holiday table in no time. To make it even quicker, I picked up some inexpensive white napkins at Target so I didn't have to sew my own.

Supplies:

• Napkins (or fabric to sew your own)
• Acrylic paints or fabric paints in metallics
• Fabric medium (if using acrylic paints)
• Round foam brush (pouncer)
• Paper plate to pour paint on

Since I used regular acrylic paints, I mixed them with a fabric medium (according to the instructions on the bottle) to make sure the napkins would be machine washable. Then I just laid out the napkins on some newspaper, dipped the foam brush, and made random dots all over. I didn't worry too much about perfect coverage for each dot, but kind of twisting the brush around a little once pressed down helped get fairly even coverage. After they were dry, I ironed to set the fabric medium.

I gave these ones as gifts - they might also be great as hostess gifts - but if I were hosting anything at New Year's, I'd definitely use these for a festive table setting!

 

 

fancy pants cookies

Any way you decorate your sugar cookies, they're bound to be tasty, but I think these marbled designs are quite an elegant way to decorate - and pretty easy too. I got the idea from a Martha Stewart special Christmas projects magazine I bought several years ago, and I've been doing this instead of sprinkles ever since.

Supplies:

• Sugar cookies (recipe here)
• Icing
• Food coloring
• Piping bags/tips
• Toothpicks

Start with some cutout cookies (my favorite recipe here) and mix up some basic frosting of powdered sugar + milk by adding milk in very small amounts to powdered sugar until you get a good consistency for spreading - not too thick, not too runny. You'll need a couple of different colors - I left some plain white, and then did some green and some red. A tip for making red frosting: start by making pink with a gel coloring, and then add the red gel coloring in. You'll use a lot less and actually get a red. Once the frosting is ready, put it into piping bags with small tips.

Spread a base color onto the cookie, and then pipe on some horizontal stripes of a different color. Run the toothpick through the stripes vertically, and voila! You can pull the toothpick through in just one direction (e.g. down) or do it up and down for a variation on the look.

To make the snowman with hearts, just make dots instead of stripes (and don't mind my stained fingertip - that gel coloring can make a mess!):

 They turn out slightly too pretty to eat, but that actually doesn't tend to hold me back much...

 

Sharing here and here:

holiday home 2011

I was really inspired this year by the Nester's post on decorating for Christmas naturally, especially the part about not taking things too seriously. I was really busy and had a lot of work deadlines right around the time that I hosted my cookie decorating party, but I wanted to have all my decorations up before having people over... Enter Nester's tips to help keep things simple: incorporate natural elements, work with existing pieces and color schemes. Definitely check out her holiday decor - it's lovely and whimsical - and in the meantime, here's my take:

 

 

I realized what I really want out of a decorated home is a feeling of coziness and warmth for the holidays, so I started with candles and lights, put out some warm throw blankets and festive-hued pillows, and added a flokati rug in place of a tree skirt (since I don't have one anyway!). And what's more welcoming than a plate of homemade cookies on the coffee table?

Then I added a couple of natural elements - easy garland on the mantle, more greens on the porch and as a wreath on the front door, the cutest little mini poinsettia, twine on the gift wrap.

I finished off the decorations with the color palette of my regular decor, which I think makes it feel cozy because everything just fits into a cohesive room rather than jumping out and screaming "holiday decor!". I have a lot of reds, browns, and yellows in the room already - obviously the red is easy to work with for the holidays, but I incorporated a range of shades by pulling my paint choices for the DIY ornaments directly from the rug colors. The pillow cases are also various shades of red - again, festive without screaming "holiday". I brought in browns and golds in the super easy tree garland (just wrap a couple rolls of ribbon around), candle holders on the mantle, gift wrap, and impromptu kraft paper table runner in the dining room (since I don't really own any linens!).

 

And I just couldn't resist giving Ginger a little decoration too - a collar I found 75% off after Christmas last year and rediscovered when I pulled out the stockings this year!

[sharing here]

fresh and easy wreath

This year I wanted fresh greens for Christmas decorations, but I didn't have much time, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money. Enter the $5 20-foot garlands I found at Home Depot... I used one on the mantel earlier, and then when I realized I was too busy to go to the greens workshop at church to make an evergreen wreath like I did last year, I picked up another garland and fashioned myself a quick garnish for the front door:

Step 1 - start with a garland, and cut it in half (bonus - now you have a perfect amount left over to wrap around a lamp post!).

Step 2 - wind garland into circle size of your choice and wrap floral wire around at intervals to secure the loop (you can kind of strategically place and hide the wire with the needles). Hold it up to see if there are any floppy bits - like that guy sticking up at the top right - and secure those with wire.

Step 3 - attach a bow or embellishment of your choosing and hang it up!

  

[Sharing here.]

Christmas baking

With my cookie decorating party and various cookie exchanges we've been invited to, there's been some holiday baking going on around my house lately... So here are a few ideas if you need to bring something to a party too:

In the super quick and easy category, we have cookies & cream bark and cookie brittle. The bark is easy because there's no actual baking required - just microwave the white chocolate to melt it, and mix with crushed Oreos. Or to make it even more festive for this time of year, you can use peppermint ones (I used the peppermint version from Trader Joe's). The original recipe is from Bakers Royale here.

The cookie brittle (like a shortbread) is quick and easy because you just mix the (few) ingredients and then bake in bar form - so just pop it in to the oven once and you're done. The original recipe is from Toll House (here); I like to make mine with mini chocolate chips and no nuts.

On the more involved side are decorated sugar cookies and peanut butter balls, but these have wow factor and are always a big hit. They also make quite a bit, so you'll have plenty to serve, or you can freeze them for later. The sugar cookies (recipe here) require multiple steps of course - making the dough, chilling, rolling/cutting it out, baking, decorating - but these are really tasty and are a great activity with kids, friends, or family get togethers.

The peanut butter balls (recipe below) are a bit labor intensive too since you have to roll 45-50 balls, chill them, and then roll them all in chocolate. I drizzled some melted white chocolate over top to make them a little fancier.

Peanut butter balls (recipe from my great grandma)

2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (17 crackers)

1 lb powdered sugar (4 cups)

2 sticks melted butter

1 cup peanut butter

12 oz chocolate chips

Mix first 4 ingredients and roll into balls (makes 45-50) and place on wax paper on cookie sheet. Chill.
Melt chocolate chips and roll balls in melted chocolate; chill to set chocolate.

[Sharing here.]

festive green mantle

We have an artificial Christmas tree, partly because it was free (thanks, Mom!), but I do love fresh greens for the holiday season - especially now that I've found how seriously cheap and easy they can be: to make the mantel festive, I just bought a $5 mixed greens garland from Home Depot, and then I cut it in half and draped the halves in opposite directions (to get the little branches to point both ways, instead of all the same direction) across the mantel.

That was it for the greens - except vacuuming up a few pine needles that ended up on the floor in the process. So easy. (Side note: the garland was starting to look a little dried out, but on the tag, it said it would last longer if misted with water occasionally, so I tried that...) Then I just set some candle holders among the greens and hung our stockings. It makes me feel so cheerful and festive every time I watch tv now!

Sharing here.

cookie decorating party

It doesn't really feel like the holiday season unless I make and decorate some cutout cookies... and this year I decided to make a little get-together of it by inviting some friends for a Saturday afternoon cookie decorating party. Here's how you can throw together an easy and low-key gathering.

I kept things simple with email invitations - I found this really cute one from Pingg and told guests that cookies and frosting would be provided; they were invited to bring their favorite cookie decorations/sprinkles to share and of course a container to bring home their treats in.

Then I made a couple batches of my favorite family recipe and cut out the cookies and baked them ahead of time. They freeze well, so you can do this several days ahead and just pull them out of the freezer the morning of to thaw.

I covered the table with a disposable tablecloth so we didn't have to worry about any icing mess and then set out the cookies, some sprinkles, some plates for everyone to decorate atop, and some knives for spreading the icing (which I just mixed up at the last minute: powdered sugar + a little milk is tasty and is a good base for sprinkles), along with printouts of the recipe in case anyone wanted to take one home.

And that's about all you need - since you'll need space on the table to put the cookies as they get decorated.

And here are some of the finished products:

Cookie exchange parties are popular, but I thought this was a fun twist - it was a great time to chat with some ladies and do a little holiday activity at the same time.