Jane’s birthday party was this past weekend and her request was for a celebration with “rainbows, sprinkles, and snacks” — all of her favorite things. When I was planning the menu I knew I wanted to incorporate some of her favorite foods, and donuts top her list of sweet treats! We unfortunately don’t have great gourmet donut shops by us, so I got creative with a little DIY to dress up some store-bought donuts with sprinkle to fit our party theme.
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This post is sponsored by FAGE, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Raise your hand if you’re on a new year’s health kick! During the holidays I must have said “I’ll be better in the new year” about a dozen times, and now that the new year (and new decade!) are actually here, I’m buckling down to kick things off in a positive and healthy way. I read recently that a more effective way to tackle resolutions (particularly around health and eating) is to focus more on the good you can add rather than subtracting the bad – it’s less about missing out on the junky stuff, and more about adding in better options. One of the better options I’m experimenting with is delicious, rich and creamy all-natural FAGE Total Plain Greek yogurt.
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On Christmas Eve I made this salad and it was one of the highlights of our holiday meal. Let’s be honest, that usually isn’t the case with the salad. We had a veritable Italian feast, and everyone was talking at the table about this pear vinaigrette, the creamy goat cheese, the sweet dried fruit and the crunchy roasted nuts (get the Trader Joe’s roasted sesame almonds if you can find them!). I even saw a few people go up for second helpings of the salad, the salad!! I sat there kicking myself because I didn’t write down any of the ingredients or measurements as I was making it, and I knew I’d be working backwards trying to figure out what the heck I did to make it work. Well, I put in the time and got experimenting to recreate it so that I could share the details here — it makes a delicious lunch or side dish for entertaining — get the full recipe below:
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I’m excited to be partnering with Little Leaf Farms this year again on some tasty recipes – their lettuce mixes are grown locally in a greenhouse facility in Devens, Massachusetts. I kicked off the year with a post about my sustainability goals, and I love that the Little Leaf Farms brand is aligned in those efforts –from collecting rainwater to use in their greenhouses to reducing the distance our food has to travel by growing year-round here in New England. My first recipe with Little Leaf Farms is Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza – with football playoffs and that big snack-fueled football fest at the end of the month, I’ve been thinking about some new game day bites to add to my menu.
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I’ve always been someone who gets hyped over the new year. I love a fresh start, I love clean to do lists, I love resetting goals and the whole clean-slate thing. It usually gives me so much energy and momentum, but man this year has not been that way! I have been sick, Jane has been sick, we’ve been operating in a cloud of sinus infections, ear infections, and general exhaustion. I even had to cancel plans on my birthday so I was in a reallll cranky spot! Over the weekend I rallied for a girls night out with my best friends’ and today is the first day since the start of 2020 that I’ve felt like I can breathe (literally and figuratively, ha). So I’m trying to get back in the game — a little bit slower in my start than I anticipated — but with lots to share.
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I made a lofty resolution in 2018 to read 2 books a month and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I took the goal seriously and made it part of my routine (finishing 29 books!), which has since gotten me back into a nice steady groove of reading for pleasure again. Last year my goal was to continue my new habit, and I paced at a very consistent speed because I ended up reading exactly 29 books again! My 2018 reading list recap was one of my post popular posts of the year, and I am writing this one to recap all of my 2019 reads — both for you the reader and for me (I love to go back and use these lists to give other book-nerds some of my favorite recommendations!).
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One of my biggest resolutions for this year is to put sustainability more in focus on this blog. It’s a topic that I’m really passionate about, but haven’t shared much of on the site because I wasn’t quite sure how it fit in. I’ve come to realize though that where it fits in is everywhere; it’s something we need to be thinking about in every aspect of our life. One site that I continue to be inspired by and look to for practical, simple advice about making impactful changes is on TheEcoMamas. Continuing my week of posts here on the blog about New Year’s Resolutions, I’m so grateful to be sharing this interview with Colleen and Gillian from TheEcoMamas with their thoughts on sustainable choices we can make in 2020! (See my other posts in the series here about getting organized and eating healthy).
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Is it even New Year’s if we’re not talking about healthy eating resolutions? Indulgent eating at the holidays coupled with picking up bad habits while I was crunched for time during a very busy work season has left me craving a reset on my health goals for the year ahead. My best healthy eating successes comes when I have a good plan in place — which means meal-prepping, brainstorming easy recipes, and filling my fridge with healthy ingredients! I love following Lara from Plan & Plate It because of her super accessible, family-friendly approach to planning meals that fill us up with the good stuff, and wastes less in the process. Continuing my week of posts here on the blog about New Year’s Resolutions, I’m interviewing Lara from Plan & Plate It to share some of her best hacks for kicking the year off with healthy-choices! (See my other posts in the series here about getting organized and going green). 
I am a full-fledged, 100% extreme, organizational nerd. But! Even I can use some help in this area and love following Corinne at Grid + Glam on instagram for all of her expert tips and frameworks for getting things organized. I started to adopt her Sunday reset method to set me up for success when I’m feeling overwhelmed with a busy schedule. And during my own week-long New Year’s house organization overhaul, I’ve loved leaning on the advice she shared with her followers about setting up systems that work long-term. To kick off a week of posts here on the blog about New Year’s Resolutions and starting 2020 off on the right foot, I’m so excited to share this interview with Corrine from Grid + Glam! (See my other resolutions posts in the series here about eating healthy and going green). 
We are in the home stretch for holiday preparations (I need to start wrapping gifts!) and I thought it would be the perfect time to share some easy ideas for a simple Christmas dinner! On Christmas Eve my family usually spends the afternoon at a family friends house for an annual party. When we arrive back home there is a short window to prep dinner, so I’m always thinking of creative ways to make items ahead of time and use some shortcuts to speed up the time in the kitchen. My friends at The Honey Baked Ham Company shared some of their delicious products with me, and I used them to design a tasty Christmas menu.
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