Christmas Day spent playing at the beach with the crew on our 60 degree Christmas day!
HELLO!! I hope everyone had a very merry, MERRY Christmas!  I've been spending my time in Maine for the past couple days and have put myself into a serious food coma. Many thanks to the gallons of chocolate milk and sweets that have been on hand! I still have Christmas in my system and wanted to share a few things that may keep you stoked!

• I'm a collector of containers and love to keep everything tucked away in an organized fashion. As we start to de-Christmas our apartment, we love using these sterilite containers for storing our special ornaments and other Christmas-y things. All of these containers get tossed into my beloved watertight trunks!
  
  
• The Christmas stockings that we currently use aren't that special to us (I think we bought them from Lowes's?), which is why I'm looking into getting some pretty needlepoint ones that will last us a lifetime! It's no surprise here that I've got my heart set on these pretty ones from L. L. Bean!
  
  
• After reading Jessica's Christmas recap post, I've decided that I need lettered cookies cutters so that I can make Christmas cookies that look as cute as hers!
  
  
• I would love to host a Christmas cookie exchange some year and I think it's mostly because I want it to look this perfect and also because I want to send everyone home with these tins filled with cookies!
  
  
• Last but not least, can I have a fireplace just to display these adorable ceramic houses? So classic, so cute, and from One King's Lane... does it get any better?? I'm sure I can find a spot in my humble abode to display these somewhere!! (:

I hope everyone had the best Christmas and are having fun gearing up for the New Year!!

the BEST holiday cookie recipe

Last year we finally cracked the code for the most amazing sugar cookies to date and I have almond extract to thank! After years of trying out different recipes, we stumbled upon one where the cookies maintain their shape when baked, they're fluffy and delicious, AND there is no refrigeration of the dough!! Win, win, WIN!!
We use this sugar cookie recipe multiple times a year for Valentine's day, Easter, Halloween... you name it! Maybe someday I can make an instructional video as to how to make them! That is my best intention, however time and daylight get the best of me... next year maybe? 
INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 egg
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF
2. Mix the butter and sugar until it is creamy
3. Beat in the egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract
4. In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder and flour. Slowly add to the wet ingredients while still mixing.
5. Roll some of the dough out onto parchment paper, measuring about 1/4 inch thick
6. Punch out your cookies using your favorite cookies cutters and then place them onto your cookie sheet with parchment paper.
7. Bake 6 to 8 minutes and let cool completely before frosting and decorating. 

Enjoy! We usually make our own frosting out of powdered sugar, milk, vanilla extract and food coloring! What is your favorite sugar cookie recipe!?

Holiday Decorating Traditions

Tis the season, friends! L has a strict rule that we are not allowed to decorate until after Thanksgiving, so once we made it back to the city on the 30th, we went straight to Prince Postale to pick out our little North End tree! We splurged on the most adorable little six footer, and began some of our favorite Christmas decorating traditions! Aside from the traditional tree, lights, and wreaths... we have a handful of more momentous decorations that we love to display as well!

- FRAMED HOLIDAY CARDS -

Framing and displaying our holiday cards quickly became a favorite when we started sending out holiday cards last year. While we only have two right now, I've purchased a plethora of frames and am excited to add to the collection down the line to see how we grow year after year! Each Christmas when I unpack them I get all giddy inside - it is hands down always THAT exciting!

This year, Tiny Prints kindly sent us another fun batch of holiday cards that we sent to our loved ones and I am beyond thrilled with how they turned out! I had every intention of photoshopping Macy Cat in, however when that went awry, we settled on this headshot of just the two of us and picked out the card that offered the most sparkles! Check out our 2014 cards here!

- YEARLY ORNAMENTS -

We have the cutest Christmas in the City ornament shop located at Faneuil hall that is packed full of every ornament imaginable year round! We make it a point to swing by that shop sometime around the Christmas season to pick out a special new ornament together that we can hang on our tree!

Filled with every single ornament that could ever exist, we decided to go with a marshmallow man ornament noshing on a cookie and milk this year! Last year L's dad gave us this cute raccoon, and the year before that we bought a Red Sox ornament to celebrate their world series win!

- PICTURE ADVENT CALENDAR -

When it comes to our advent calendar we use a compilation of pictures from the past six years that are numbered 1 through 25. Originally adapted from my older sister, each day of December we flip a photo over until we reach Christmas!!

- DISPLAY HOLIDAY CARDS -

We love receiving anything in the mail that isn't a bill and look forward to the holiday cards that come our way (don't mind the birthday cards, L and I both have birthdays in December as well)! I made this wine cork board last year that we hang up to display our incoming holiday mail! Having the cards out on display is such a fun and sentimental way to keep our loved ones in mind during the season!!

 What are your favorite holiday decorating traditions?

AFFORDABLE stocking stuffers for HIM

Shopping for guys is definitely no easy task, check out my list of favorites that I rely on each Christmas!

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AFFORDABLE stocking stuffers for HER

AFFORDABLE stocking stuffers for HER!

I think I should preface this post by stating that I am a huge stocking stuffer shopper! I get so much joy out of finding and purchasing cute, fun and potentially useful gadgets for others!
I wanted to share a handful of my favorites that are all around $30 and under! Hopefully this list is of use to you! Stop by tomorrow, I'll be sharing 16 stocking stuffers for the men that you can afford!

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I hope your shopping is going well!!

Preparing for Christmas in November

I promise this isn't a list that tells you to deep clean your home before the holidays. As true as that is, I have a few other tasks that I like to see done before the most wonderful time of the year. I'm under very strict rules here where I am absolutely not aloud to do any Christmas-y things until after Thanksgiving. In an effort to stay on top of the holiday season, I do have a few projects that I like to tackle during the month of November to keep things running smoothly during December to ensure a fun and enjoyable month!

HOLIDAY CARDS! - It is a priority for me to get these ordered and mailed pre-December. 

I try my hardest to get our holiday cards sealed, stamped and delivered by the first week of December at the latest. Despite my best efforts, L and I still haven't had the opportunity to snap a fun picture and are hoping that we can get one while we're in Maine over Thanksgiving. Once again, we will be ordering ours through Tiny Prints, and already have some designs picked out!

GET ORGANIZED! - I am the queen of lists, and rely heavily on them for everything!

If there is one thing I'm good at... it's making a list. Having something written down in front of my face and crossing it off may just be the most satisfactory thing ever. I recently designed and put my Christmas Planner up for sale on Etsy (you like that nice plug I put in for myself?) and have been relying on it constantly this season already. With so many baking recipes, christmas gifts, events, and decorations to account for, this was most ideal in helping me with December craziness. Now that everything is logged and accounted for, it's a one stop shop when it comes to anything December related! 

SHOPPING! - I told myself last year that everyone was getting gift cards for Christmas this year, and despite my intentions... everything but that is true.

I get so much joy from picking out gifts that I truly think our friends and family will enjoy, and get even more joy out of wrapping each of them up and looking at them under the tree. I am pleased to say that about 90% of our holiday shopping is complete and I will have to check a very large suitcase to get L's family gifts out to Ohio! We haven't begun the wrapping process yet, but having almost everything picked out and ready to go before it's even December is a HUGE weight off of our shoulders! 

HOLIDAY PLAYLIST! - Without a doubt, when the clock strikes 12 Thanksgiving evening, I can assure you the Christmas tunes will begin to ring!

I won't be missing a beat when it comes to my beloved holiday jingles, and I sure hope you won't be either! Putting together a playlist has become a world of a lot easier (hello, Spotify) over the past few years, however make sure all of your ducks are in a row so that you are ready to push play come Black Friday!

HOLIDAY OUTFITS! - Get them now before you're stuck wearing your most festive set of pajamas to your holiday party!

Speaking from experience, I can't stress the importance of getting your holiday outfits and pajamas together before they sneak up on you. Here it is, late November, and I need to wrangle together at least two work party outfits, and other items to wear for events. Of course I can repeat outfits ("you are an outfit repeater, Lizzie McGuire") and have no shame in doing so, but that doesn't discount the fact that I am in dire need of new holiday pajamas. I'm not joking when I say I have worn my buffalo plaid jams ALL YEAR ROUND and they have definitely lost their Christmas cheer. Poorly played on my part.

 

How do you prep for December in November?

the PUMPKIN COOKIE

It occurred to me the other day, that the most fall-esque activity that we have done all season was go to a couple fairs and eat some apple crisp. It's OCT 22nd people, and that's all that I have documented. In an effort to have some more fall fun, L and I picked some pumpkins up from Prince Postale the other day to carve, and whipped up a delicious batch (same recipe as last year) of our favorite pumpkin cookies!
INGREDIENTS:
Cookies:

• 2.5 cups unbleached white flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 0.5 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 0.5 teaspoon salt
• 1.5 cups granulated sugar
• 1 stick of butter, softened
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 4 tablespoons of butter
• 2.25 cups powdered sugar
• 0.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

Cookies:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. 
3. In a large bowl, beat the sugar and butter until well blended. Slowly beat in the pumpkin puree, egg, and vanilla extract until smooth.
4. Gradually beat in the flour mixture.
5. Place round scoops of batter onto a baking sheet that is lined with parchment paper.
6. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until the edges are firm. Let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

1. In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese and butter together until smooth.
2. Add the powdered sugar, ground cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Beat until full and fluffy.
3. Refrigerate any leftovers. 

SO DELICIOUS!! THE CINNAMON FROSTING IS EVERYTHING!

A little documentation of our carving extravaganza! Currently sitting pretty in our window sill would be the scariest of jack O' lanterns and the creepiest of cats!

How are your fall and Halloween activities going??

Happy Easter

Happy Easter!
Here's to hoping everyone had a wonderful Easter Sunday filled with lots of love, joy, family and sweets!

L and I finally took advantage of living down the street from Old North Church and attended their Easter service. Being in America's Church truly is such a neat experience and I love that they still hold two services every Sunday. They had chandeliers filled with candles that were all lit, and the music was very traditional with a choir, organist and a brass band for the holiday! What an amazing service, we will definitely be back.

L and I put together Easter "bowls" this year mainly because we couldn't justify baskets that would get in the way the other 364 days of the year. Storage space is limited, so we opted to use our beautiful white serving dishes instead. I had so much fun putting together L's bowl! Being the huge cereal eater that he is, I picked up an adorable cereal bowl and I also threw in a bunch of candy, clothes, a candle, etc. L hooked me up with a ton of kit kats, an amazon gift card, and he filled an entire carton with cadbury eggs!! I was one happy chick. 

When it came to hiding each others bowls... we are both apparently wrong in the head. Inspired by my sister, I wrapped his up in a bag and hid it in the clean litter box. When it came to me finding mine, I looked every where and finally after 15 minutes, and a game of hot and cold found mine buried at the bottom of our trash can, covered in coffee grounds, last nights dinner, banana peels, and who knows what else!

We have a video of each other finding each others Easter bowls, but it's in the vertical format and super long. #rookie
We ended the night with pizza while watching the Wolf of Wall Street, so of course I whipped up a batch of the best sugar cookies on the planet, and made them super bright and fun!

...and what's a post without a super ferocious picture of my pet lion.  

 Happy Monday, friends! 

St. Patty's Day and Other Happenings

This really should have gone up two weeks ago, however I refuse to go into April without a St. Patricks Day recap, and I thought it was due time to get some pictures up here to keep you in the loop! We did nothing mind blowing this year. Nope, nada, zilch. In fact, we kept it so simple that Landon didn't even wear green! Can you believe it? You can bet your bottom dollar I pinched him crazy and harassed the poor guy all day! 

I did make these delicious cinnamon chips out of tortillas, and they were indeed quite the hit! I wanted to make sugar cookies so bad so I could use my shamrock cookie cutter, but since I am in the middle of the 21 Day Fix I opted for a much healthier way to play with my cookie cutter.  These are so easy, you can make them in your sleep! Cut out your favorite shape using a cookie cutter, scissors or a knife, lay them on a cookie sheet, spray them down with PAM (or if you're fancy, lightly brush them with melted butter), and toss your cinnamon sugar all about. Bake at 400 for about 7 minutes or until the edges start to turn light brown. Serve with fruit, chocolate syrup, caramel... anything really!

In other news, eating clean has been going very, very well. It's amazing what a huge difference it makes, and how much more energy you have! Here's a little snapshot into my weekly meal planning. I'm obsessed with these containers. They are 8 ounces, which is perfect for the nutrition plan that I'm following. Basically, I measure out my portions way at the beginning of the week, and all throughout the week all I have to do is grab what I want and it's all set to go! 

I've also found my new favorite snack. These no bake protein balls. When I start to get the munchies at night, need some protein in the morning, or want something sweet after dinner these little guys are the perfect remedy. One or two of these will fill me right up!

The hard drive on my macbook took a turn for the worse the other day. Out of nowhere my fairly new Macbook froze so I turned it off in an attempt to restart it and was disappointed to find a grey screen with a file folder and a blinking question mark in the middle. No matter what I did, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I even took the backpack off, unscrewed things and took the hard drive out myself. It was definitely a gone-er. Everything was gone. EVERYTHING. Every last document, picture, bookmark.... so moral of the story, save all of your documents in google drive, save all of your bookmarks with google chrome, and back everything up on an external hard drive. I was reduced to tears.

Luckily, my brother does IT, so I shipped it out to him, where he was able to install a whole new hard drive and ribbon, as well as update everything and recover all of my information for a fraction of the price I'm sure Apple would have tried to swindle me for. What happened, and what was the problem? It was a manufacturing issue that apparently happens all the time to people unexpectedly... so if this isn't making you rethink where all of your docs are saved, I don't know what will!? Coming from someone who is plugged in way too much that I should be, I was lost for a week without my documents, and was on the struggle bus trying to make ends meet in terms of work and other assignments. 

Christmas 2014

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone already. This year was a pretty great Christmas mainly because L and I both got to see everyone in our family. We traveled to Ohio for the holidays and have been on the roll with all of the hip, hop and happening Christmas parties, dinners, celebrations, game nights, shopping and family time! It truly has been great!
Even though there was absolutely no snow, we still made the best of it and had the jolliest of times!
I should have known better, but I always seem to go a little overboard on presents. I love boxing everything up in brown paper packages tied up in string, however when it comes to figuring out how we're going to transport them from point A to point B... I lose my cool. Somehow, we managed to squeeze almost all of our presents into the tiny car to make the trip. Next year, everyone's getting gift cards!

Wrapping is my favorite! I invest entirely way too much time perfecting each and every gift so that they are all different yet all the same theme. I went a little tulle crazy and incorporated it onto almost every gift. Gifts that L and I bought for our families included the fleece lined flannels from L.L. Bean, Visa gifts cards, a latte machine, flannel pajamas, fleeces, hiking socks and soles, and I bought L some Bean Boots!

My mom's rendition of a Christmas tree this year was much improved from last year when she didn't even get a tree. I think it's safe to say she has reached the "low maintenance Christmas" phase of her life and is waiting for us kids to start hosting the holidays. In other news, I made my first turkey dinner and we noshed on that feast which was followed by exchanging our gifts. 

My sister and I made two batches of sugar cookies and ninjabread men, while my mom had some molasses cookies on hand as well as some delicious cranberry cookies that she made. We basically baked and baked and baked and then ate everything. There is an unending supply of candy and cakes sitting around here and I have absolutely no self control. Who cares!

I accidentally bought a $30 lotto ticket the other day and got lucky. I don't like gambling with that much.

I also came extremely close to adopting another cat multiple times. Look at those faces! L said no.

Other Ohio shenanigans involved getting to go see my favorite hair lady in all of the land, eating at some of my favorite small town shops and meeting up with some high school friends. It's so fun to see what everyone is up to these days.
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and wish you a Happy New Year!
P.S. If you want to join in and try the 52 week money savings challenge... NOW is as good as time as ever to start!