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My Secret to being “Lucky”
Let me start off by saying that I consider myself extremely lucky in that I have two beautiful daughters and an incredible husband. We’re all healthy and very happy. We live in a nice warm house and have plenty of food to eat, nice clothes and lots of toys. But when I look back at the last 40 something years, I’ve never been a “lucky” person in what you might think of as traditional luck. I don’t gamble because frankly, I’ve never won more than a free ticket in a scratch off. I’m convinced that the lottery pool I was part of at work never won a thing because I…
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DIY Chalk Paint Cabinet
When we moved into our house several years ago I sourced a lot of different places for furniture – outlet stores, thrift stores, furniture stores, catalogs, Ikea. I didn’t want our house to have a “furniture store” look. If I liked the look of something and it went with the space I bought it. A lot of our furniture we’ve acquired over time. I think it’s hard to move into a house and immediately buy every piece of furniture at once – unless you have unlimited budget and a designer on speed dial. What I did do when we bought our house, is made a list of each room and…
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Homemade Soft Pretzels
We live outside Philly – so you know we love soft pretzels. Several years ago we found a recipe for homemade soft pretzels. This recipe is AWESOME! Full disclosure: to make these pretzels you do need to plan a little bit in advance because they require a little bit of rising time (about an hour). But overall the pretzels are fairly simple and they are amazing. It’s also a really fun cold or rainy day project for kids to help out with in the kitchen. This pretzel recipe we used by Alton Brown is amazing. I think that Alton’s secret is in boiling them in the baking soda water before…
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52 Blog Post Ideas for 2020
Looking for blog post ideas? Here are 52 new ideas to write about each week in 2020 – from New Years Eve to Christmas Eve. Consider mapping out your blog post calendar now for 2020. Once you have a plan in place, getting it done will be a whole lot easier. Plan to write one post a week for the next year. Anything beyond that one post will be a bonus! Achieving your writing goals will be so much easier if you have your plan mapped out. Hopefully the ideas below can help with your planning. New Years Eve Party Menus New Years Day Menus Healthy Dinner Recipes Budget Ideas…
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Christmas Eve Menu
Christmas Eve traditions vary all over the world. In the Philippines, they celebrate with beautiful lanterns, in Austria Krampus frightens naughty children (we might need to look into this one), in Norway people hide their brooms from witches. Here in the U.S. many celebrate the evening by spending it with friends or family. The last few years we’ve started a tradition of spending Christmas Eve with a few friends, neighbors and family. We exchange a few gifts, break a little ice (as my uncle would say) and munch on some holiday goodies. I love how festive Christmas Eve is with the fire blazing and the wine flowing and the kids…
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Where I Found the Best Ever Santa Train
For years friends had been sharing pictures and experiences that they’d had on local Polar Express and Santa Trains. I knew that it would be something that my kids would really enjoy but I wasn’t sure which one to choose. So last year I researched some area trains in the Philadelphia suburbs and even one in New Jersey. There were actually quite a few of them. I noticed that some of the trains could be really expensive – more than $100 per ticket. Some of the trains reviews weren’t that great – things like…the train being cold and not very comfortable and serving cold hot chocolate and running out of…
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10 Family Favorite Christmas Cookies & Candy
Affiliate Links – As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Typically the week before Christmas we like to gather our cookie supplies and make loads of cookies. Everyone in our family has a different favorite cookie (of course they do). We’ve got a fairly diverse group of cookie lovers – from sugar to chocolate to nuts. There are also a few that prefer fudge…we’ll get to that too. (I found the EASIEST and BEST fudge recipe a few years ago.) Kids – Since it’s the holiday season, we have to make Sugar Cookies. The kids love to help roll and decorate them with sugar and icing and sprinkles. Let’s…
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12 Easy Things You Can Do NOW To Jump Start Your New Year
Affiliate Links – As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It’s crazy to think that 2020 is almost upon us. It seems like we were just celebrating the new millennium and were preparing for the Y2K bug. It’s almost unbelievable that the year 2000 was nearly 20 years ago. Back then Jen and Brad were still a thing, NSync was topping the charts and I’m not totally sure that I even had a cell phone yet. I was likely more focused on what to wear New Year’s Eve than planning my goals and resolutions for the next year. Now that I’m older and hopefully wiser, I focus a…
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Easy Charcuterie Board from Aldi
Easy and cheap charcuterie board from Aldi with meats, nuts, fruits, spreads, cheeses. Great for holidays and parties.
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Easy Ham & Cheese Sliders
These ham & cheese sandwiches have been a staple at our family gatherings for close to 30 years. We make them for every baby shower, holiday and get together. Anyone that has ever tasted them asks for the recipe, they’re really that good. They’re fairly simple to make and a crowd pleaser. Add them to your next holiday party menu and you will not be disappointed. Ingredients 2 packages of dinner rolls (I use Hawaiian) 24 slices of deli ham 12 slices of swiss cheese and cut in half 2 sticks butter 2 tablespoons dijon mustard Poppy Seeds 1 tsp onion powder 1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce 1tsp garlic powder 2…
