HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and is getting off to a great 2011!
I've been 'off' for almost 2 weeks now and during that time, I've been mostly.....lazy. I have loads of laundry to still do and a couple of rooms and closets to de-clutter, but because I've been a bit under the weather with some whack stomach thing and just burned out from the holidays, I decided to hang back a bit on a few chores. HOWEVAH, I did manage to squeeze in some baking - well more than I intended, some decorating, and some party styling.
Here's how my holiday went:
I helped Thing 1 and Thing 2 make Santa sugary Sugar Cookies.
They did a bang up job.
I even made my Red Velvet Bundt Cake, but didn't get a picture of it in all it's glory - but I tried my best to get a picture of it before it was entirely devoured....
Then I stayed up all night wrappin' gifts!
And making sure that Sant's gifts arrived and were appropriately placed under the tree. I made Special Deliver Tags with the North Pole post mark with a lil' clip art found
here
(Please excuse the quality of my photos - it was VERY early in the morning when I took these and I just couldn't.....)
Lucky little Thing 1 got just what she wanted for Christmas....
And insisted that we immediately try it out. Yeah.
So, there I was at 8 am in the morning pushing a teeny weeny cake through a plastic lightbulb oven.
It's been years since I used one of these things, but I don't remember the cakes being this big!
Here's my darling daughter's final product - I caught her before she went overboard on the sprinkles.
Very cute.
Here's a little montage of how I decorated for the holidays....
Our Red & Gold decorated tree (which I'm absolutely over - more on that later)
These were on the fireplace mantel
Noisemakers that we found on the Island of Misfit Toys - not really but they do tend to cause mischief when their buttons are pushed - get it? buttons pushed......????
I don't think I have ever expressed this, but along with the Christmas Tree and it's red & gold color scheme, I'm also over my dining room chairs. They need some help - they're old and they are falling apart. I needed to give them something festive to add to my tablescape. I'd seen a picture in a magazine where they designer hung stockings on the chairs to use as a place card and gift. I decided to do that and then I added a sheer red bow to pretty it up.
This is our holiday table!
I swapped out some of my xmas decorations for a small New Year's Eve Cupcakes & Cocktails Station I set up at my house to toast us into 2011!
We did a very small celebration at home and I have a favorite Pink sparkling wine that I love. I took the idea of Pink Champagne and used that as the inspiration for my toasting station. I added black and gold because I thought they meshed well with the pink. Plus LOTS of gold for prosperity and black because I don't want to be in the red this year! Ha-ha!
I've used this tiered plate stand more times than I can count - but we used it to put Santa's Cookies on! Now, they show off Pink Champagne & Tuxedo Cupcakes. The gold tree was an after Xmas sale clearance find. I made cupcake wrappers using scrapbook paper and cut out shapes to make the tuxedos.
I designed some toppers and signs on my computer for decoration and added pink rhinestones for a bit of sparkle.
I borrowed the gold lace runner from my holiday table and the gold beads and ornaments came off of my Christmas tree!
These Pink Champagne Cupcakes are delicious. I just altered the recipe that I use for my Mimosa cupcakes and with a little dye - made them pink!
Remember how I said I was over the whole Red and Gold theme? I'm thinking that I'll work with these colors come December!
I'm already inspired!!!!
