If you’re reading this chances are good that you’re pretty well versed on my love for entertaining. Bringing people together over a great meal is a true passion for me, and luckily my husband agrees. The result of two people who love to cook and spend time with friends? We entertain a lot. And by “a lot,” I mean as often as a few times a month. I get asked all the time about how we do that, and the answer is that we keep it simple! Sure, there are times that we cook an intricate meal, but most of the time I’m a huge advocate of pulling together a spread that is wow-worthy without taking all day to prepare. One of my favorite entertaining ideas is any kind of “make your own” food station, in this case an awesome pasta bar that I created shopping exclusively at Walmart! The beauty of this pasta bar is how quickly it comes together, how amazingly convenient it is to pick everything up in one shopping trip and how tasty the end results are! Your friends and your kids will go crazy for this one, and the prep time is totally minimal. This is my kind of dinner party!
Entertaining
I’m a really big fan of simple ingredients that are perfectly paired together. I also really love potatoes. While those two things may seem completely unrelated, I’m here to tell you otherwise with these super tasty smashed potatoes! Don’t they look kind of fancy? Well they’re not! You just need to be able to boil water and operate your oven at a very minimal level and these beauties can be making your palate happy with just the teensiest amount of effort. They’re topped with fresh lemon juice, Greek yogurt, lemon zest and chives for a flavor combination that is light and refreshing and seriously delicious. I love these as a party appetizer! You can line them up on a tray so friends can just grab them and bite right in! Or they’d also make a great side to a weeknight or weekend dinner. I like boiling up a bunch of potatoes and then just smashing and baking off a few at a time during the week for breakfast or dinner. So good! And that, friends, is my ode to smashed potatoes. Try these! You’ll love them.
Easter is tomorrow, which doesn’t hardly seem possible, so I’m coming in hot at the last second with some last minute inspiration for your Easter dinner table! (Or your Easter brunch table for that matter.) I teamed up with my friend Briana of Pretty Little Vintage Co. to blend pieces from her amazing collection of vintage finds with basics I already had to create a modern, elegant dinner table that feels really chic and celebratory, but didn’t take a huge budget to pull together. (Pro tip! Rentals aren’t just for weddings and formal events. You can and should absolutely consider rentals for things like holiday dinners and parties, too!) Pretty blue floral vintage dessert plates were paired with very inexpensive white dinnerware, layered with cloth napkins and gorgeous vintage gold flatware to create the sweetest mix. Crystal wine glasses (which my mom snagged me as a gift on super clearance a couple years ago) are matched with blue cut glass goblets, and a field of mismatched brass candlesticks serves as the simplest of centerpieces. All in all, it’s a look that skips Easter pastels in exchange for a touch of elegance that would also serve perfectly for any dinner party.
As a kid Easter was always one of my favorite holidays! (Actually, as a grown up it still is!) I loved that I got a cute new Easter dress every year, I loved waking up to a basket stuffed full of goodies, but mostly I loved decorating eggs. My mom and my aunts would often get us together with our cousins to spend an afternoon coloring eggs a few days before Easter so they could be whisked off and hidden in the middle of the night by the Easter Bunny. Over this past weekend, Em and I did the same, inviting her cousins over for a fun-filled day of Easter glee! Now that she’s a little older, it’s so much fun to begin passing down these traditions. (I should note that she’s not actually in a single one of these photos though because she wasn’t having it. Two years old with a mind of her own!) Today I’m teaming up with Walmart to share all the details of our little egg decorating party with you! From the snacks to the decor to all the Easter goodies you see here, including all the kids’ cute outfits, you can snag everything at Walmart in one quick shopping trip and throw together your very own party. Let’s hop to it!
A few of my girlfriends and I have been talking about starting a book club, but as busy working moms, it just hasn’t seemed to happen. Getting it together enough to read an assigned book in a set timeframe? It’s something that seems completely daunting, even for those of us who absolutely love to read. The solution? A modern twist on a book club party, one that is much more relaxed and takes the pressure off entirely. This isn’t your mother’s book club, friends! It’s much more fun, there’s champagne and thanks to a little inspiration from the P-touch Embellish Ribbon and Tape Printer, there are super cute details that will make your friends excited to dive into a good book!
Now that spring is finally here (at least officially), let’s talk brunch! It seems that there are so many brunch-worthy occasions over the spring months between Easter, Mother’s Day, bridal showers and just the joy of sunshine and birds chirping, so I couldn’t resist pulling together a fresh and colorful spring brunch table to share with you. As I was deciding on the color palette and other pieces, I was inspired by the P-touch Embellish Ribbon and Tape Printer to create a few sweet little details to really bring things to life. I also picked up big bunches of alstroemeria and daffodils at the grocery store and tucked them into pretty planters, then layered marble patterned plates with jute chargers, the prettiest peach and gold flatware, and colorful napkins to make things feel special and festive, without involving a ton of prep work. Brunch is about coming together with people you love to share an hour or two of food, mimosas and laughter, not about spending hours stressing out over setting the table. You can work with the pieces you already own, layer in a few touches created with the P-touch Embellish and you’ll have the perfect brunch table set and ready to go when friends arrive!
Back in October (actually just a few days after our wedding), I joined a group of my fellow bloggers at the Food52 test kitchen in New York as guests of Delta® Faucet. It was an amazing day of food, design and camaraderie where we got to try our hand making a few fun appetizers and check out some gorgeous faucets from Delta Faucet featuring their new ShieldSpray™ Technology. You may even remember seeing a sneak peek on Instagram while I was there! Today I am sharing a trio of easy fondue recipes that I created in partnership with Delta Faucet to (a) help inspire a little food fun at your next cocktail party and (b) to give you a look at the beautiful new faucet that now lives in my kitchen and how it has seriously elevated the game of my nearly 60 year old sink. Be sure to watch to video too, where you can see these fondues in action! (This is one of my favorite party appetizers to date, and that’s saying a lot.)
A few months ago I found myself really really wanting a record player for our dining room. As a kid my grandmother always had a record player and stacks of vinyls that she’d play all the time (alongside her impressive 8 track collection), and lately it’s just been something I’ve felt would make an amazing addition to our home. By now those of you following along on Instagram know that we made it happen and have been sending me tons of questions about which turn table we chose, how it sounds, which speakers we have to go with it, and a myriad of other questions. Apparently we aren’t the only ones wanting a little vinyl in their life! Today I am sharing all the details on our particular setup, a review on how we’re enjoying our particular components after a couple months of use, and thoughts on other options you can check out depending on your budget and interest level. Spoiler alert! We love the addition of a record player to our home and definitely don’t think we’d ever go back to not having one.
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.
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.