Making homemade gifts is one of my favorite ways to bestow a little love on friends during the holiday season, and I’m sure many of you know by now that I’m no stranger to a good gift basket. Gift baskets are fun because you can personalize them with thoughtful little touches specifically for each recipient. Also, people love getting baskets full of goodies to open and enjoy! Today I’m teaming up with Walmart to share this super chic DIY spa gift basket with you, along with a sensational little recipe for a homemade peppermint foot soak that is unbelievably good. You can buy all the items shown here, including the foot soak ingredients, right at Walmart so you can knock out one or a few of these baskets in no time for all the ladies on your “nice” list needing a bit of pampering!

These DIY Christmas ornaments are made with clear glass ornaments and discarded crayons. They are a super easy DIY ornament project that the you can customize with your favorite colors.

When we were kids there was something about the official Christmas cookie baking day that my mom and our good family friend used to co-host every year that was absolutely magical. As an adult my holiday baking tends to happen here and there in waves throughout the season versus on one specific day, but as a kid I looked forward to cookie day all year long. The peanut butter blossoms were my favorite to make then and they still are today! I was always in charge of unwrapping the Hershey kisses, rolling the dough balls in sugar and then smushing the chocolate kisses on just right. These cookies always show up on cookie trays this time of year, but I’m going to go so far as to tell you that these are the best peanut butter blossoms you’ve ever eaten, so if you need the best peanut butter blossom recipe to add to your cookie repertoire, you’ve come to the right spot! Keep scrolling because I am also linking up below to a handful of my best blogging friends and some of their favorite Christmas cookie recipes, too, so be sure to pop over and give them all a little love.

‘Tis the season for the most festive of Christmas cocktails and I’m serving up one of my new favorites! I’ve dubbed these frothy little concoctions sugar cookie White Russians and with good reason. They’re loaded with yummy vanilla flavor and topped with whipped cream, sugar cookie crumbles and sprinkles! This is the type of cocktail that is sure to wow your friends and makes the perfect addition to your hosting repertoire this time of year. I’m partnering with Walmart to bring you the recipe, which boasts my personal favorite vodka, Tito’s Handmade. (Any other Tito’s fans in the house?!) So let’s get to mixing, because this cocktail is going to make your actual sugar cookies at least a teeny bit jealous this year.

The sweet little old lady whose family owned our home for more than 50 years before we bought it was well into her 90s when she passed, but her reputation for hosting a great cocktail party still lives on. We refer to her affectionately as Mrs. T, and let me tell you, Mrs. T was famed for inviting all the neighbors over for Christmas Eve cocktails, which is a tradition we’re determined to continue through the years in her honor. Today I’ve teamed up with Walmart to share my tips on how to stock the perfect holiday bar cart! A few fine spirits, a handful of great mixers and some festive seasonal touches will create the sweetest station for mixing your favorite holiday cocktails at all your gatherings throughout the season. From more casual cocktails with the neighbors to your rockin’ New Year’s Eve bash, these tips will take you straight through the holidays in fine fashion.

Designing pretty printable gift tags for readers is a bit of a tradition around here, in part because I love sharing my love of beautiful stationery and in part because I’m personally such a sucker for a well-wrapped gift. I absolutely love how a great gift tag can make even the simplest of packages feel so special and unique, which is a quality I like all of the gifts I give to have. Have you ever noticed how much more excited loved ones get to unwrap a gift that’s all decked out in the perfect ribbons and bows? People can tell when you take a little extra care wrapping their gift, making them feel even more loved, and for me that is what this season is all about. With that spirit in mind, I’ve teamed up with Staples to share the prettiest hand-painted printable gift tags with you! I collaborated with my amazingly talented bestie Erika Firm who took my ramblings about plaid and “traditional but modern” and turned them into a collection of nine seriously stunning gift tags all created by hand just for you.

Some of you may have seen on Instagram that I recently purchased a record player for our home and have started amassing a collection of my favorite Christmas albums on vinyl. I am a total Christmas music junkie and it’s what I’ve been listening to almost exclusively since the first week of November. I totally get it if you’re the type that prefers to wait until December, but for me it just makes the season when I am creating and shooting so much holiday content feel so much more festive so November it is! You guys loved when I shared my Christmas music favorites so much last year that I decided to update The Sweetest Christmas playlist with some additional selections for this holiday season, some old and some new. In addition to my growing collection of holiday vinyls, this is my go-to playlist and is, in my humble opinion, one of the best Christmas playlists you’re ever going to find. It’s got the classics, it’s got the modern classics and it’s got a few brand new songs that were just released this year. Check it out! Follow along on Spotify and let me know if you want additional playlists throughout the year, too. I’m happy to oblige! (Scroll down for a track list for those of you who don’t use Spotify.)

Whatever it is about the holidays, I become a total Instagram junkie this time of year. I guess you can call me a sucker for an excessive number of photos of Christmas lights, homemade ornaments and cups of cocoa. Like a good holiday movie, I just can’t get enough of catching a glimpse of how people are celebrating. Maybe it’s simply that seeing all the incredible joy this time of year inspires just makes me so damn happy. Basically, I’m a big Christmas season nerd and I can’t fight it! Today I’m sharing 10 seriously inspiring Instagram accounts you absolutely need to be following this time of year! Prepare yourself for an influx of gift ideas, recipes, cocktails and Christmas trees. While you’re at, be sure to give me a follow, too, if you’re not already! In addition to new posts I also share glimpses of favorite holiday posts from the archives, my personal holiday season adventures, and cute photos of my sweet little kid, too.

Entertaining is definitely a passion of ours, but during the holidays we seriously ramp it up, even for us. Already on our hosting calendar for December is a Christmas brunch with Bob’s side of the family, a Christmas cocktail party with our neighbors, a potential gathering with Bob’s co-workers, and the usual Christmas Eve and Christmas Day festivities. Add in any number of the impromptu get togethers we’re known for and it’s safe to say that this time of year I go into hostess mode for a month or more straight. That’s why today I’ve teamed up with the folks at Tyson® to share my top ten tips for easy last minute holiday entertaining! It’s my goal to help you feel empowered to entertain during the holidays, even if maybe you don’t typically throw parties or even consider yourself a host or hostess. So here I’m sharing my favorite ways to streamline prep work, inspiration for really simple recipes, and a bunch of “do ahead” and “last minute” ideas so you can hop off to the grocery store the night before or last minute and bring things together without a lot of stress.

A few years ago Bob and I sat down over coffee and had a long talk about our holiday shopping tendencies. It wasn’t our first such talk, but it was the cumulative talk where we got real with ourselves about our Christmas shopping habits to date and devised a new set of Christmas gifting traditions. Today I am collaborating with Walmart to share more about those new traditions and how we decided we wanted to put more effort into selecting fewer, more memorable gifts for the kids and our loved ones over the holiday season. We realized we were both feeling frantic every holiday season and it seemed we were buying endless stacks of gifts that lost their meaning because they were just one among many. We knew we wanted our kids to look back and remember joyful holiday celebrations full of love, cheer and a few really special gifts instead of just never-ending tearing of paper from packages. So, we are now the family with stockings packed full of little goodies, a small handful of carefully chosen gifts for each family member, and matching Christmas pajamas to give Christmas morning that extra cheeky cheer. I mean, you can’t forget the matching Christmas pajamas!

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, things are about to get decidedly merry around these parts! Tis the season for entertaining and I, for one, could not be happier to host family and friends as often as possible over the next several weeks. Today I’ve teamed up with 34 Degrees to share a few easy tips and inspiring ideas for hosting a simple yet super chic holiday cocktail party. I think this is truly the easiest way to entertain over the holidays and oftentimes the most fun, too! You won’t have to spend hours prepping, cooking and then cleaning the kitchen and with a stash of 34 Degrees crisps at the ready, you can serve up tasty gourmet bites in a flash. Plate them alongside a selection of delicious cocktails, crank your favorite holiday playlist and you’ve got a hip holiday party waiting to happen.

Wondering what to do with those leftovers? Make stuffing waffles from your leftover stuffing! They’re so easy to make and crazy delicious with loads of flavor and slightly crispy edges that you’ll totally love.