Christmas Food "Hacks"

I hope that you all had and awesome Thanksgiving yesterday with your family and loved ones! I know we sure did at our house. I'm still cleaning up from it! :)

However, it's officially Christmas time!!! I adore this time of year! Everyone is always so cheerful and nice and the weather is wonderful (in my opinion) and then don't get me started on all the Christmas decorations that we get to put up and see!! I love it! Along with all those wonderful things comes a busy, busy few weeks as well... Especially for moms. We are constantly planning and prepping and cleaning and cooking and entertaining and wrapping and the list goes on. 

So, to make lives a smidgen easier this holiday season I've found some pretty creative hacks to share with you all! Some of these we've all seen before and some of them I've never even thought of doing! (And those that I haven't thought of before, were pretty spectacular in my opinion.)

Here you freeze chocolate into tree shapes and then add some icing to the backs and place them on a flat white cake to make it shine a little!

Fill empty condiments bottles with icing for decorating sugar cookies with the kids!

Dip cookie cutters in flour first to help the sugar cookies retain their shapes!

Look at this simple center piece! White candles and peppermints! Love it!

These are frozen dollops of coolwip/whipped cream to put in your mugs of hot cocoa! Such a great idea!

Three small candy canes glued together makes the perfect place card holders for your holiday tables!

Use the bottom of a crystal glass to make a unique design in your sugar cookies.

These were just a sampling of the hacks that I found on Buzzfeed! 

You can check out the rest of them over here: 38 Christmas Hacks

I hope that some of these come in handy throughout your busy holiday season this year and help you cut some corners!

-Stephanie

A Pirate Party for a Princess

So, my little princess turned five last month and we had a great party for her! She LOVES Jake and the Neverland Pirates that comes on Disney Jr (check it out if you have little ones, it's incredibly cute!) and she was Izzy, from the show, for Halloween. So it only made sense to have a pirate birthday for her this year, too!!

After the photos I'll share how this was put together for y'all!

 The kids "dug" for buried treasure.

 Shark bait.

 Eye patches and pirate hooks!

 These were for all the treasure the kids found!

 They decorated them all, too!

We also had a pinata that the kids had a lot of fun with!

1. I found the eye patches at Party City for around $3 and the hooks I actually found at a thrift store here in town! It was right after Halloween and the were about to get rid of all of them so I grabbed every last one they had for the party! (I was incredibly happy! They were a steal, too!!)

Some of these ideas I found on Pinterest. Here is a link to my Pirate Party board for you all to check out for more ideas, as well: Argh mateys!

2. The Pirate ships were very easy to make! I bought a couple of boxes of the blue jello and made it into the cups (and you HAVE to use the tumblers of the cups are way too big! I bought them at Party City for around $10.) The next day I sliced up my oranges and then put toothpick pirate flags in them!

3. For the printables I used two different sites. Catch My Party Pirates is one site I downloaded from. I used one of their templates to make my labels out of. I ended up copy and pasting them into word and then again into your PAINT program. In there you can select and area and then delete it. So I deleted the inner text and then copied it back into Microsoft word. After that I added a "text box" and typed up what I needed in a pirate font! (That was probably the hardest and most complex part of this process.)

Pirate Sales is where I found the sales for the orange ships. I sliced two lines into the top and bottom of each sale using an exacto knife and then slid in my tooth picks.

4. The rum floats were simple vanilla ice cream with the option of coke or rootbeer and the skewers were tropical fruits placed on the long sword toothpicks!

5. The treasure dig I used an old wash bin that I have and bought a bag of sand and filled it up with treasures! I used dollar store beaded necklaces, gold coins, some well wrapped candy, and other little party toys I had come across.

6. The last thing we did was to send all the kids on a real treasure hunt to find all their goody bags! They had a blast. We just sent them off in a direction... It was completely wrong at first, of course and then they had some clues that we gave them to help them along! They had a blast!

I hope you enjoyed these photos and the tips I shared with you all! As well, I hope that your pirate parties turn out to be just as much fun as mine was!! (And you if you have any questions regarding point number three please don't hesitate to ask! I'll help as best I can!!)

- Stephanie

A Fun Cheeseball!

Have you ever been sucked into the black hole that is called Netflix?? You have!!???! Then you'll understand me when I say I'm sorry for my extended absence, because that's exactly what happened. Netflix.

I am going to try and do better. My time management skills have been severely lax these days... SEVERELY!!!

So, here is something I found recently that I couldn't pass up sharing with you all:

This looks divine!! And I plan on trying it soon!

All it is, is that wonderful funfetti cake mix, butter, cream cheese, and a fair amount of sugar! You mix all the ingredients together, freeze the ball for a few hours and then roll any color sprinkles on it for fun!! 

Serve with graham crackers, fruits, or vanilla wafers like the picture suggests!! SO ingenious! 

This would be perfect for a birthday or maybe a girls night or book club meeting!! Give it a try! I know I am!

Here is the link for the full set of instructions for this amazing looking cheese ball:

Colorful Cheeseball

Go check it out and try it at your next hosting gig!! :)

-Stephanie

Under The Sea

Check out these cute treats from Catch My Party!!

Eeek!! These are too adorable! I love octopuses and these are just too much! These would seriously be perfect for an under the sea party or a pirate party or maybe even mermaids!! And all they are, are marshmallows on sticks! Super easy. I really might just add these to the ever-growing list of projects for Jocelyn's birthday coming up! (I should really stop and just try to make it through Halloween and Christmas first!!)
Check more on these underwater critters and how to make them for your party here: http://catchmyparty.com/photos/671914

- Stephanie