As the holiday season starts off, I love dusting off the entertaining skills and brainstorming new ways to celebrate with family, food and drinks! When I’m coming up with new recipe ideas, I always like to start with in-season ingredients. Around Thanksgiving and into the Christmas season, there is nothing tastier (and local to my area!) than using cranberries in recipes. I’ve found countless ways to add them into my entertaining mix in the past and continue to find new ideas for incorporating them into drinks, appetizers and décor.
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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, because it’s all about two of my most loved things: family and food. The actual Thanksgiving dinner is such a treat, but to be honest, I love the leftovers the day after (who am I kidding, sometimes that evening!) even more. In fact, getting creative with Thanksgiving leftovers has become a bit of a sport for me – I love the challenge of creating something delicious and new with them. 
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Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I’m so excited for stuffing and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and family and football! Did you notice I didn’t say turkey? It’s funny how this giant bird is the centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner, but truthfully, it’s not my favorite part of the meal – I’ll take the side dishes over the bird any day! Roasting a turkey is quite the job, I’ve done it a few times before and it takes time and patience and lots of crossed fingers to ensure it comes out just right.
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A few weeks back I polled my instagram followers and asked what they wanted to see more of this holiday season, recipes or DIYs? The response was almost 50/50 and I have great news, today’s blog post is an easy holiday recipe and makes a simple DIY gift too: Chocolate Ginger Snap Dipped Marshmallows! 
‘Tis the season for holiday parties, and I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m grabbing a bottle of wine every weekend this time of year to bring to a friend’s house, a family party, or another seasonal celebration. A bottle of wine or prosecco is everyone’s go-to hostess gift, and for good reason, it’s useful and delicious! I often struggle though with which wine to select, and how to make it stand out among the sea of other bottled hostess offerings.
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You’ve cleaned the house, you’ve ordered your groceries, the apron is on and all that is left to do is prep the holiday meal. Of course there’s one other item on the list that you forgot to tackle: putting together a Pinterest-worthy tablescape for your beautiful meal and gracious guests. I can sense the eye-rolls as you read this, because with everything else going on with holiday preparations, who has time for that?! That’s why I have four easy DIY ideas to dress up your place settings for the holidays that should take under 5 minutes to make and use simple household supplies:
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I’ve been sharing some updates here as we finish up our guest bedroom over the past few weeks, and thought I’d let my followers in all of the redecorating fun with a giveaway! I’m always on the hunt for amazing, affordable and eye-catching artwork (and bonus points if it’s large scale enough to finish a whole wall!) so I was delighted to find out that Chasing Paper was launching a brand new print shop. I was lucky enough to preview the shop and get this holy-cow-awesome oversized peace sign print for the room. Another really fun lifestyle brand that I’ve recently been introduced to is Meridian, and I used one of their gorgeous accent pillows to add just a little pop of texture and color to the room. The pillows are made out of vintage kilim textiles, which makes their designs totally unique. If you head over to my instagram page tonight, I’m partnering with both brands to giveaway a framed print of your choice from Chasing Paper and a similar vintage ikat pillow from Meridian. Click on over there to enter to win, and good luck!
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We’re just a few weeks out from the official start of the holiday season. Over here in blogger-land though, I’ve been busy prepping holiday content for weeks – which means taste-testing holiday recipes, pulling together entertaining tips, and of course keeping my glue-gun warm with some fun seasonal DIYs.
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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because of the food – of course! The past few years though the holiday that been inching up my favorites list has been friendsgiving. It seems like everyone has adopted this fun tradition, and I’m delighted that it’s become so popular. It’s another chance to indulge in tasty Thanksgiving side dishes (I love to use it as an excuse to test a new recipe that I might not normally try for actual Thanksgiving day). I also have noticed that friendsgiving tends to come with a bit more of a casual vibe than the traditional family gathering, where friends just kick back with cocktails and bites and catch up – which I am certainly on board for.
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When it comes to hosting holiday parties, I always start my menu with a cheese plate. Dinner parties, cocktail parties and open houses – you better believe there will be cheese at all of them! This year for holiday entertaining, I thought it would be fun to take a different approach to the cheese plate and try a brand new way to serve my favorite cheese board components.
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