My collection of plates and tea cups started when I threw a tea party baby shower for my friend, Nicola, a whole decade ago! Over the years, I have added more treasures to my collection, and I love the stories … Continue reading
My motto about cooking is that I don’t do it much, but when I do, it’s something I saw on Pinterest. We throw a big holiday party every year. Last year, I introduced these puff pastry Christmas trees, and they’ve … Continue reading
If you’re already familiar with Spoonflower, then you know how amazing their site is. If you haven’t been introduced to them yet, be prepared to be completely addicted! They can custom print anything on fabric, and you can design your … Continue reading
When I got married, my mom gave me a little notebook with favorite baking recipes from our home. Last year, I shared our childhood banana bread recipe from this book.
Another favorite is this recipe for a cranberry white chocolate cake. It has the perfect blend of moistness with sweet and tart flavors, and it’s always a hit at the holidays. It originally came from a Baker’s chocolate ad in an magazine, though we’ve tweaked it a bit over the years.
Ingredients:
Directions:
I make this cake every year for our holiday party, and it has become a popular tradition!
What are some of your childhood holiday favorites?
“Jewels”
It’s hard to pick a favorite thing about our recent Mad Men- themed party, but the food was a definite hit. Do check out the other posts on the pre-party brainstorming and the Mad Men party wrap-up for more ideas.
To Drink
True to the spirit (haha) of the show, I’ll start with the drinks! Steve played bartender for much of the evening, which I think satisfied his connection to the TV series – he mixes himself a drink in one of our roly poly glasses for each new episode.
Mad Men Party Bar Menu including both classic and whimsical items. No one went for the Mountain Dew…
Mad Men party bar set-up with menu and collection of vintage Dorothy Thorpe glasses.
In the dining room, we had a dry bar including some fabulous California-themed vintage glasses from our local thrift store. I love the whimsical art with Sally Draper serving drinks. It’s from Dyna Moe’s book, Mad Men: The Illustrated World
Mad Men Party dry bar set-up with vintage glasses and Mad Men-inspired art.
Fab vintage glasses for a Mad Men party.
To Eat
Besides an array of appetizers set out in “chip and dip” format, Steve and I each had our pet projects for the evening’s menu. His was definitely more refined – a Beef Wellington. Since we were eating buffet style (and serving 25), he made a “deconstructed” Beef Wellington, and it was perfection! His have-to side dish was a wedge salad with blue cheese. I confess to eating just the blue cheese and bacon, but the wedge did look good on the table…
Deconstructed Beef Wellington
Classic wedge salad.
My retro dishes of choice were a Waldorf Salad – modernized with some dried cranberries – and a Jell-o mold. I did look up some traditional Jell-o salads, but I couldn’t bring myself to put vegetables into gelatin, even for the sake of authenticity, so I made mine with canned Mandarin oranges and strawberries. It was delicious and definitely a nostalgia item for many in the room.
Contemporary Waldorf salad with dried cranberries
A mid-century housewife moment: Jell-o mold with strawberries and Mandarin orange slices.
A big thank you to our friends who came back in time with us for a fun evening!
“Jewels”
Pulling off a birthday party is like an athletic event (or at least I imagine it to be, not actually being athletic) – I work like crazy and then crash afterward. It’s always worth it to give our boys a day to remember. Here’s the first post on our seven year old’s Ninjago birthday party. I put details on the party activities in a separate post.
Ninjago birthday decorations
I still like the feel of a paper invitation, like the ones I made for our firefighter birthday party, but sometimes the convenience of an online invitation is hard to resist. Luckily, evite has this Lego-themed invitation, and I added a Ninjago drawing by our birthday boy, to complete the look.
Customize an online invitation for your Ninjago birthday party.
For decorating the house, I hung our reusable birthday banners, customized with pictures of green Ninjago Lloyd ZX. I had in mind to do balloons with stuck-on Ninjago eyes, but I ran out of time!
Customized Ninjago birthday banner.
I printed signs for the activities using Bonsai font and mounted them on green scrapbook paper. Each child got a Ninjago eyes T-shirt to wear when he arrived. This was their main party favor, and the shirts were a hit! It was really fun to see all the little Ninjagos running around the house together!
I failed to capture the partying kids in any decent poses – they were moving too fast! but here’s the birthday boy’s little brother sporting his custom shirt. You don’t need to make your own shirts to have great Ninjago accessories. I have definitely picked up a lot of Ninjago and other Lego shirts and toys at great prices on Zulily.com!
Ninjago birthday food ideas
As you can see from the sign in this picture, I had wanted to arrange fruit into a Serpentine, one of the Ninjago enemies, but due to limitations of daylight savings time, I just piled the fruit on a plate, and it was all gone in an instant anyway – I told you those Ninjago are fast!
For lunch, we had a variety of Japanese and Japanese-inspired fare, including California rolls and avocado rolls from the local supermarket, homemade Spam musubi by Steve, and plenty of gyoza dumplings, which were the kids’ favorite.
Ninjago birthdy party food: gyoza, musubi, and rolls.
Instead of a cake, I made sushi using Rice Krispies. These Rice Krispy treat sushi are decorated with fruit roll-up for the “nori” and Swedish fish and fruit gummies for garnish. They were a lot of fun to make, though time-consuming. If you do it, I definitely recommend making a half batch at a time, as the Rice Krispy treats kept hardening before I could shape them all, and I ended up with several leftover globs.
Rice Krispy Treat sushi made from Rice Krispies cereal, fruit roll-up, Swedish fish, and other treats. So cute!
Happy birthday boy at his Ninjago-themed party!
Ninjago Birthday Activities
These were a blast, and you can read all the details in this post!
Happy birthday to our dear son! I am glad it was such a fun day.
“Jewels”
Warning: this stuff is addictive!
One day, Steve brought home some chocolate- and caramel- coated saltines, and I couldn’t stop eating until the the bag was gone!
When I saw recipes for caramel and chocolate pretzel bark, I knew it was going to be the perfect sweet, salty, creamy, crunchy treat. I based my recipe on the Salted Caramel Pretzel Bark from Mama Says What and I added almonds and some subtle spices to give it an extra rich taste.
ULTIMATE Almond Pretzel Bark recipe with a secret ingredient!
Ingredients:
Instructions
Easy steps for making the ULTIMATE Almond Pretzel Bark recipe with a secret ingredient for extra kick!
For maximum freshness, store the bark in a container in the freezer. Mine is in the chest freezer in our basement, and I would like to say that I burn enough calories going up and down the stairs to justify this treat, but that’s probably wishful thinking…
“Jewels”
Steve likes to say that everything sounds better when spoken in a British accent… My version is that everything tastes better when it came in a pretty package. I love a project that can reuse an old item in a beautiful way – upcycling at its best! For the holidays this year, I decided to make a variety of gifts in a jar to give to our neighbors and the kids’ teachers. I saved glass jars of various shapes and sizes, and I’ll show how to clean and prep them below.
Here are a few ideas for how to make your own gifts in a jar:
How to clean jars for reuse:
There are so many ideas for gifts in a jar. Step one: clean and prep your jars.
Another tip: make a funnel from clean card stock to help layer ingredients more neatly.
Some more pictures of our dressed up holiday gifts:
Homemade apothecary jars filled with bath salts make a wonderful gift for a shower, hostess, or any occasion.
I really love having something handmade for the holidays, and making several of the same gifts made the project more doable. The only real-world caveat I have is that these were very heavy to carry into school. Add our toddler in the baby carrier on my back, and I definitely broke a sweat. It was all worth it, though I might recommend a wagon if you are trying this…
“Jewels”
I’ll admit I’m not the main cook in our family – thanks, Steve! – but I do have a few dishes that I rely on to get a good, healthy meal on the table, and this is one of them. Our whole family loves the taste of this take on Chinese sesame noodles, and I love that you can pack it full of veggies that the kids will eat. Since it can be served cold, it’s also a good meal to make ahead for hectic weeknights.
Ingredients:
For the noodles:
For the sauce:
Instructions:
Here are the ingredients (sans chicken), waiting to be mixed:
Sesame noodles full of vegetables!
Mix the ingredients for the sauce together and then stir into the noodle mixture. You can serve this dish hot, cold, or anywhere in-between.
Asian sesame noodle recipe with lots of veggies the kids will eat!
H0pe you enjoy this addition to your family’s menu!
“Jewels”
I don’t spend that much time in the kitchen, so if you find a recipe here on Jewels’ blog, you be assured it will be easy to make. I love French toast, and this is my favorite way to make it come out perfectly delicious every time!
The secret is to use Italian panettone bread. Its rich, sweet flavor is the perfect starting point for French toast. Here’s the easy recipe that will serve 6:
To prepare the French toast,
Bon appetit!
Jewels
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