I just wanted to take some time to wish all of you and your families a happy and healthy holiday season. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas surrounded by loved ones and are gearing up for the New Year. I also wanted to let everyone know that I will be re-launching the website with a new look for the new year, so starting tomorrow the site will be down for a few days… not to worry, it will be back up and running on January 1st! Thanks to all of you who have been following, commenting and for all of your kind words of encouragement… I can’t wait to share all my ideas with you in the new year!
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Removable Faux Fur Boot Covers
Since a lot of you will be giving and receiving UGG boots over the Holidays I thought this craft would be a perfect post to leave you with until after Christmas. My husband and I went to the Niagara Holiday Market a couple weekends ago, where they have a “merchants row” where stores from all over come to sell their products. We saw these in a few of the seller’s shops and I liked them a lot but they were charging around $45 for them and I knew I could easily make them and do it for less. I looked online a couple days ago and the main website who makes them is selling ones that look identical to mine for $39, plus $12 for the suede lacing… mine cost much less than that! I bought the faux fur, suede lacing and gold buttons at Joann Fabrics and they only took me a few minutes to make. I used these to cover my UGGs but you can make them to cover any kind of boot, and the best part is that they slide right on and off so you don’t always have to use them. Click here to get the tutorial and see how they’re made!
Bourbon Balls
This recipe came to me all the way from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida from a woman my mother-in-law works with and I am glad she passed it along because these are really good! A big thank you to Janet Snyder… these gooey and delicious little balls rolled in confectioner’s sugar have rounded out my Christmas baking! Click here to get the recipe and see how they’re made!
Hershey’s Kisses Peanut Butter Cookies
This is another cookie my grandmother and I used to make together and has always been a big hit with the family. The recipe comes right off of the bag for the Hershey Kisses and they’re really simple to make which is nice if you’re like me and trying to finish up your holiday baking! This makes 4 dozen cookies. Click here to get the recipe and see how they’re made!
Grandma Nik’s Sugar Cookies
This recipe is my most treasured Christmas Cookie recipe, as it was my Great Grandma Niklas’ which was passed down through the family. When my grandmother and I baked cookies together when I was younger, this used to be my favorite part. We’d sit in her dining room at the big long table and just chat while we iced and filled the length of the table with finished cookies. The cookie part of it is the same as the one I used for my Decorated Cut Outs (I will repeat all the steps in this post) but the icing is what steals the show! They’re decorated with just a dusting of colored sprinkles… my grandmother told me the other night that she used to make her own sprinkles by tinting granulated sugar with a drop of food coloring which I thought was so cool! The best part about this recipe is that they’re not supposed to look perfect… the icing will inevitably drip down a few sides and some may break but these cookies are Christmas for me! Click here to get the recipe and see how they’re made!
Houndstooth Party Dress
As Christmas is less than a week away and New Years Eve is fast approaching I know all of us are in search for the perfect party dress and this craft is it! I was looking around in Macy’s and found 3 or 4 dresses just like this in designer names for $150 all the way to $275… the total cost for me to make it was $19.98. Ever since Alexander McQueen’s Fall 2009 Collection, I have been obsessed with houndstooth and I think it’s great for the Holidays! You may recognize the dressI made, I used the same pattern (Vogue 8667) to make a dress in an entirely different fabric for a charity even in November. For this one I used a wool/polyester blend fabric which was perfect for two reasons… 1. It kept me very warm and 2. It was thick and soft enough that I didn’t need to line it which was perfect because I made it the night before I was going to wear it. We went to dinner with my parents, my grandmother and a great family friend at Salvatore’s Italian Gardens and I needed a great dress to wear, but didn’t want to spend a fortune so I looked at the department stores for some inspiration and this is what I came up with. Like I said, I didn’t line the dress so it took much less time… I was able to make it start-to-finish it in less than three hours so if you’re looking for a last minute dress you can make it yourself! Click here to see more pictures and get the details!
Baking With Kids
My mom had the day off from work on Thursday so she came into town with my beautiful niece, Madi. We had such a fun day playing games and riding the rides at Chuck-E-Cheese and going to the craft store. Last year my grandmother got Madi a kitchen set for Christmas and ever since then she can’t get enough of “cooking”. My parents got her a grill set for their house and she got a cupcake set for her 3rd birthday and she LOVES playing with them. My brother told me she wanted to bake Christmas cookies this year so that’s what we did, and that’s my home tip for the week- involve kids in your holiday baking! You’ll be shocked how much they can do and we really did have so much fun! Click here to see pics and see what we did!
Decorated Cut Outs
If you’ve got the time over the holidays, this is a great alternative to the standard sugar cookie (which I will be doing a post on soon!). Piped with royal icing in lots of detail, these cookies are great packaged up and given as gifts or as the star of your dessert table for Christmas. These are fun because the possibilities are endless… I make them different each year and it’s fun to come up with new ideas! I doubled the recipe and it yielded about 12 dozen cookies but my trees were huge so you probably could get more. Click here to get the recipe and see how to decorate the cookies!
Gingerbread Cookies
I’ve been crazy busy this week working on our family’s Christmas Cookies this week so I’ve been working hard on baking and falling behind on posting about them so I apologize. These Gingerbread cookies are the latest cookies and are great because they are generally a staple for the holidays. This dough can be used for the Gingerbread House that I previously posted on. They’re crisp cookies with hints of the molasses and dark brown sugar with piping of royal icing around the outside and are delicious! This recipe makes about 4 dozen. Click here to get the recipe and see how they’re made!
Peppermint Gingerbread House
I love gingerbread houses during the holidays. My dad and I always used to buy the little kits and make them together, and our family used to meet relatives for dinner every December at a place that had HUGE and elaborate gingerbread houses on display. This house I made last year so I’m lacking a lot of “how-to” pictures and the ones I do have were taken on my Blackberry, but it turned out so great that I still wanted to share it with everyone! Click here to get the recipes for all the components and see how it was made!
