Cookie swap + a sweet take away...

I'll take any excuse to throw a party.  If you know me well, you know how much I love to entertain. I think it's a combination of being my mother's daughter (her holiday dessert party has made her a legend on the West Coast of Florida) and also the fact that I just love entertaining people in our home. Something about sharing a good meal, some good wine and good company is one of those things that makes a house feel like a home.

So this month, when three of my girlfriends all had birthdays, I put together a cookie swap so all of the ladies could get together and celebrate (and who doesn't need more cookies after the holidays, right?).  Now the cookie swap I can't take credit for - this awesome tradition was started by our friend Kate few years back and when she and her family moved to Portland last August, it left a huge void in our group of friends here in SF.  So in honor of Kate, we decided to keep the cookie party alive and hold it in honor of our January birthday gals (in the past it's been a holiday cookie swap in December).  Kate was of course missed but we did manage to get her on the phone with us for part of the party.  All around a good time and everyone left with full bellies and lots of treats to take home, including some homemade vanilla extract.

Something else I also love about hosting a get together - the party favors!  And this particular was not only delicious, but also super easy to make.  Instead of using vanilla beans, I used Nielsen Massey Vanilla Bean Paste, which you can find at most gourmet specialty shops (I got mine at Sur La Table).  Its cold processed and is concentrated enough to make a large jar of extract (and at about $10 a bottle, it's alot less expensive than the beans!).  To make it, I just dumped the whole jar of paste into a large jug and then put in about a liter of vodka (I went for the cheap stuff since I would be cooking with it and not drinking it). I then sealed off the jar and left it to sit in a dark place for 3 months, shaking every so often to get things good and mixed up.

I wasn't quite sure how it  would compare to doing this same process with the beans but I was happy to find that it's not only delightfully fragrant but it's also delicious (none of that overly alcohol smell that extract sometimes has).  I used a few teaspoons (yes, I kept one of the party favors for myself! :) to make some lemon buttermilk cookies and it worked beautifully!  For the packaging, I found the darling labels here and used small glass jars with the tops wrapped in washi tape, just to make them a bit more colorful.  I plan on  making another batch of the extract soon but next time I am going to try it with bourbon...um, yum!  :)

New dining room chairs! Well, sorta new....

I think I was a dumpster diver in a former life. Ok, so that's kind of gross...let me rephrase. I think I was probably a flea market addict, a bargain hunter, an antique collector...you get the idea.  But really, if you ask my husband, I have been known to bring home objects that some might consider garbage.  Take my new (well, repurposed) dining room chairs.  On our way home a few weeks ago, I saw these beauties sitting on the side of the road near our apartment. Dave, of course, thought I was insane for wanting to drag them inside, but I saw something special in them beyond their ugly 1960s chipped cream paint and ripped green laminate seat exterior. Nothing that a little paint and fabric can't fix, eh? And luckily I was right - several coats of black paint and some updated colorful upholstery later, we had four new dining room chairs. The painting process did take a few days (between stripping them down, painting on the primer and several coats of black paint), however, the seat recovering only took about an hour.  All in all the extra labor was totally worth the result. :)

This is what they looked like before...

Seat cushions removed...

Stripped and primed...

I cut the fabric a few inches wider than the seat cushion all the way around and then staple gunned each side once to start.

Once I got all four sides nailed down, I went all the way around with staples while pulling the fabric tight.  Then, for the corners, I folded the fabric in (nicely like a present :) and stapled those down as well.

And voila!

These are the chairs post 3 coats of black paint...

And here they are with the cushions put back in...

So pretty!!! :

A Very Merry Holiday

If you couldn't tell already, I love Christmas.  And while I am wiped out from all of the festivities, I am a little sad to have to wait another year for my favorite holiday to roll around again.  The 25 days of DIY has been so much fun that I am happy to have another 365 days to figure out what to do next year.  I saved my favorite DIY post of this project until the last and yep, you guessed it...it's a wreath. :) This one came about on another trip to Beverly's Crafts when I fell in love with these tiny glittery balls. Who me? Fall in love with something sparkly? Shocker.  Instantly I knew I wanted to make a wreath out of them so here you go...my very festive glitter ball wreath (shine some lights on it and it's like my own holiday disco ball).  I hope you all enjoy it and I wish everyone the merriest of holiday seasons and a wonderful new year!

Keeping warm and cozy...

This is my favorite time of year for cooking - all the mixing and baking makes me very happy.  I love that this is the one time of year when everyone seems to be gifting their baked goods, even if come January I am griping about my expanded waistline and the dozens of Christmas cookies I ate.  So this year I decided to give our friends some tasty cocoa mix to keep them warm and hopefully dip all of those yummy treats in.  I found the recipe here and these darling homemade gifts were a huge hit with our friends and family. And I loved the way they turned out so much that I had to make a big jar for the husband and I to enjoy Christmas morning. :)

Homemade Holiday

I apologize. I am one hour and 42 minutes late with this post.  It's been a busy couple of days- our studio had it's biggest job of the year last night, my Mom arrived in town early this morning and we hosted a dinner for nine people tonight.  So it's 1:42 a.m. right now I am finally sitting down to do yesterday's post. Today's is a good one though and I think it warrants forgiveness for my tardiness.  :)

So, given current my DIY obsession, this year had to be deemed a "homemade holiday" when it came to gift giving.  I have two projects that fall into this category (the second will be posted in a few hours :) and this first one made for perfect holiday gifts for my girlfriends.  I found this citrus scrub on Pintrest and it originates from Paula Dean's website. It consist of 3 ingredients — sea salt, lemon zest and almond oil (so easy!).  I packaged them in small mason jars and downloaded the awesome labels here.  They ended up being such a cute gift for my gals and there was even enough scrub left over to make a few jars for myself. :)

Paper Evergreens

Here's another DIY I found in the Martha Stewart's Handmade Holiday Crafts book (you can also see the tutorial here).  Once again, Martha must be magic because I could not, for the life of me, get the paper to fold nicely (and of course my trees ended up looking nothing like hers do).  After trying three types of paper (the more folds you do, the less it wants to crease), I finally was able to get the thin green craft paper to cooperate a bit.  In the end, my trees resemble very unmanicured evergreens (I'm thinking more "in the wild" than Christmas tree farm). But either way, I love how wonky they turned out as it's a bit more my style (just wait till you see my gingerbread house - Martha would definitely NOT approve).  :)

Glittered Dreidels

A few years ago, my mother-in-law gave us a gorgeous menorah and I love bringing it out with our holiday decor each year.   It's sitting on our mantle right now and this year, I decided to make some festive dreidels to go along side it. I made these a few weeks ago but given that today is the first day of hanukkah, I felt like this was an appropriate day to post this project.  These little guys were so easy to make and they look darling sitting at the base of the menorah. I found the little wooden dreidels at the craft store and just covered them with mod podge and some blue glitter.  At the same time, I also made a glittered star, which was originally made to be a photo shoot prop for a client's holiday card I was working on (see here for how to make it).  I figured I had so much glitter left over from my sparkly ornaments project, why not just spread some more bling around our apartment. :)