How to gain ten pounds in a month Give me all things peppermint! Trader Joe’s makes their Hold the Cone in a limited holiday peppermint flavor, Crescent Ridge offers their peppermint stick Holiday Cridgewich ice cream sandwiches, New City Micro Creamery offers holiday peppermint stick ice cream pies and Trombetta’s also offers a peppermint stick ice cream pie!

Hot chocolate bombs, love them or hate them? Personally, don’t love them, but the kids adore them. One of these days I think I will try my hand at make our own, they look easy enough to make…

Right now we are in to the cutest beaded necklaces. Found these on Etsy, how fun are those glitter Mickey beads?

I love a good dessert board. Are they even a thing anymore? Samplers will always be a thing in my book! This fun holiday themed dessert board is perfect for a hot cocoa themed night in. Some marshmallows, some dippers, mug toppers, and crunchy cookies to put your cocoa over the top.

I also love a good shelfie. Here are some of our favorite holiday reads:

Twas the Night Before Christmas, Illustrated by Mr. Boddington

5 More Sleeps ‘Til Christmas By Jimmy Fallon a fun rhyming book counting down the sleeps until Santa’s arrival.

Together by Heather Stricker A story of a boy who visits Santa, and tells him that instead of presents, he wants to spend time with his family, and enjoy their family traditions.

Christmas baking is in full swing – cupcakes are top on the list. Let’s get out all the different sprinkles and have at it!

One of my kid’s favorite things of the season is my childhood neighbor makes these reindeer brownies and delivers them to us every year. They gobble them up!

And no baking season would be complete without sprinle cookies. Made with massive amounts of butter and cream cheese, these are melt in your mouth delicious with just a hint of almond flavor. They have the right amount of crunch on the outside and yet remind me of a childhood bakery. What are some of your fondest holiday baking memories?

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I think that when I had my first child I had these holiday visions of the perfect gingerbread house – beautiful icing, rainbow colors, gumdrop roof, peppermint walkway. And then I had my third child and reality set in that frosting ends up EVERYWHERE, its a sticky mess, there are globs and blobs, someone ends up crying (probably me) and the house ends up falling apart halfway through and the kids could care less after minute 5.

So here are my best tips for a clean (if that’s your thing) and stress free (if you even get stressed out about these things) or less stressful, holiday gingerbread experience. First, go ahead and buy that pre assembled gingerbread house. no one is looking and no one is judging. You can get it here. Sure, you can buy more expensive ones, but this is worth every penny. And if anyone is looking THAT closely, you don’t want to be their friend anyway. Another tip, go ahead and buy one that you have to assemble and HOT GLUE GUN that house together, because, let’s be honest, NO ONE eats a gingerbread house that their kids have decorated. I mean those kids have licked their fingers and probably sneezed on it one or six times, you’re putting that out on your holiday table and then throwing that baby out come January 1st.

Same with decorating cookies. You can spend your time in the kitchen making the tasty home made cookies that are super cute and time consuming to cut out and frost, when really, all your kid wants to do it throw some candy on it, lick their fingers (maybe eat 2 cookies) and then you throw the rest out. Maybe your kids could eat more cookies, mine PROBABLY could, but I’m not sticking around or willing to find out.

I mean, do you really want to see their behavior after they eat all this candy?!?! hahaha. So maybe make. one good batch of cutout, frosted cookies, and fake the rest! It’s ok to take some short cuts during this crazy holiday season. And if a complete store bought cookie package is too much, but a pre made cookie dough and roll it out and cut those. Perfect compromise. What is your best holiday shortcut?

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Now that Thanksgiving is over, I am in FULL holiday mode. Tree is up, shopping has already begun, and, let’s be honest, is almost done, and we are in baking M.O.D.E!

Chex mix is a go to in this house, you can make it big batch and is super fun to package up and give to friends and neighbors. I’ve put it on here before, but here is the recipe in case you’ve missed it:

• 1c butter
• 1 1/2c brown sugar
• 1/2c light corn syrup
• 1 (14oz) box of Rice Chex
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1tsp vanilla
• 1c m&ms

In a small saucepan, heat butter, brown sugar and corn syrup to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda and vanilla.

In a brown paper bag, add caramel mixture over cereal and shake. Place in microwave for 2 minutes and shake again. Repeat. Pour mix onto wax paper to cool and add in m&ms.

If you wan to get those cute Utz pretzels in holiday shapes, you should probably have bought them already, or they are gone….but there are so many other cute choices and variations that you can make here.

Cookie swaps and edible gifts are my go to as well. I usually make sprinkle cookies, a chocolate chip of some sort, and a few cut and bake varieties or no bake choices, just to keep things simple. What are your favorite cookies?

My least favorite to make are cutout cookies, they are time consuming – but they are so cute! And chocolate covered Oreos are also a fun treat to make, and oh so easy when you have a silicone mold.

One of my favorite things to do is decorate my outdoor planters. Red berries add just the right pop of color, and I love the different textures the greens give. I chose these with the help of my friends over at Trombetta’s in Marlborough. They have something for everyone, at all price points, whether you want to design something yourself, or if you want to get a predesigned pop to drop into your planters.

While you’re there don’t forget about wreaths and trees!

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It’s getting to be that time of year, pumpkin spiced everything! Well, I think we actually may have just skipped right over that season actually, and we are now actually in the 40 something days until Christmas season…. but I do love making pumpkin bread. I love this recipe from Once Upon a Chef and the best part is that you can open the recipe and keep it in “cook mode”, which keeps your screen from going dark. Nothing worse than being elbow deep in mixing and having to swipe up your phone. I also love that this recipe makes two loaves, because I actually make one plain, and mix chocolate chips in the other one, because of course, my kids can never like the same things!

What is your favorite pumpkin recipe?

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I have no idea what these are actually called, but we call them pretzel kisses in our house. Sometimes, you just need something to keep your kids occupied with while you do the dishes or get dinner ready, whatever. The most time consuming part about this is little hands unwrapping 40 Hershey Kisses, or however many you decide to make.

We like to use all different kinds of Kisses, and even Hugs too! If you want to get especially tricky, have your kids make them into patterns or sort them into piles according to design. My favorite pretzel kisses are made either with Hugs or the original Hershey Kisses. We tried the sugar cookie Kisses and let me tell you, they weren’t horrible! You can also make these with Rolos, which we also love. Line your baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper. Line up your square pretzels and put your Hugs or Kisses on top. Place in oven at 200 degrees for about 4-6 minutes. Remove from the oven and add an m&m on top of the hug (or Kiss) and squish it down. Place in fridge for 5-10 minutes to let the chocolate set.

There’s something so simple and nostalgic about these, we make them frequently and even add them to our holiday cookie boxes that we give to our friends.

Have you ever made these? If so, what do you call them?

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I feel like you either love candy corn or you hate it. There is no in between… For me, I am totally NOT on team candy corn. But they are fun once in a while to use to make crafts. For these cupcakes, it was more about decorating them than what they tasted like. For these kinds of crafts or baking projects, I just use cake mix from a box and if I’m feeling very lazy, I use store bought frosting – although most times I make my own buttercream frosting, it’s so simple!

Sometimes you want to be present for the activity that you are doing with your kids – and taking shortcuts Is totally ok. They’re never going to remember that you used store bought frosting! My piping skills are not top notch, but you can see that the candy corn and candy eyes cover up most of the frosting, so this cupcake decoration is very forgiving.

Even my youngest likes to get in on the fun, and while they don’t exactly look like turkeys, all the kids had a blast making them!

My brother gave me FOUR bags of candy corn this year. I have no idea why. He was probably regifting them to me. While I could have just dropped them in his mailbox (and we would have passed them back and forth until next Halloween), we decided to make a wreath with them. That way, he would have to take them back! I found these particle board wreaths at the dollar spot at Target and we used Mod Podge to glue the candy corn to the wreath. We used the spray Mod Podge to coat the candy corn and give it a shiny finish. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Are you team candy corn?

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We are how many months into this quarantine and I’m sure that like me, you are struggling for new things to do with your kids. I don’t know about you, but those rainy days kill us – we are trapped inside of the house with no way to burn off that excess energy. We do a LOT of baking in our house. I love that a lot of bakeries are giving out recipes for their beloved treats, so when SusieCakes put out the recipe for their sweetheart sandwich cookies, we jumped at the chance to make them. While the original recipe calls for buttercream in the middle of the two cookies, we opted for jam – we made so much home made jam this year! We used these cute bunny cookie cutters for the inside, but you could use whatever you have on hand. You can find the recipe here.

With more than one kid at home, there are bound to be arguments. Sometimes we need to go to our own corners – here’s where those forts come in handy! We happen to have these teepees at our house, but you could easily construct a fort with pillow cushions and sheets or blankets. We string up some holiday lights on ours and my kiddos love to go in there are hide from one another or read books.

Another idea if you are stuck inside is to make an indoor obstacle course using things that you already own. We brought in hula hoops so the kids could hop from one to the next, we practiced jumping over the jump rope on one leg and on two, crawling under the pool noodles, doing forward rolls on the gym mat, and practicing throwing fake snowballs into a bucket. Or maybe just use found objects on the floor and pretend the floor is lava and you can only step on the objects you’ve set out (but be careful they don’t slip).

I don’t know about you, but we have a TON of Easter eggs in our basement. I filled ours up with loose change and hid them around the house. Not only did the kids go crazy having fun looking for the eggs, but afterwards, we emptied the eggs and sorted the coins. After sorting, we counted and rolled them so we can deposit them into the bank. This is a great independent activity, guaranteed to give you at least 30 minutes of peace and quiet to yourself.

If the weather is nice, go outside and find a place where you can feed the ducks – or in our case, there were just a lot of Canadian Geese and sea gulls, but hey, the kids were amused for 30 minutes! If we have left over bread we just throw the pieces in the freezer and take them all out when we have enough to feed the birds – sometimes though, we make croutons).

Sometimes I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of markers. My kids end up with marker in places you have no idea how they even could have gotten here. We always have some fun cardboard shapes on hand (we picked these up at the dollar section at Target) and I let my kids go wild with washi tape.

Coffee filters can be used for so many things. You can have the kids color on them with markers and then dip them in water (or spray with spray bottle full of water) and let the colors bleed into one another.

Another option of how to color coffee filters is to use water colors on them. Makes sure to put a paper towel under them so the colors don’t bleed onto your work surface.

We used some of our coffee filters to make these fun hot air balloons! All you need besides the colored coffee filters are some pipe cleaners and construction paper.

Another project we used the coffee filters for were these fun flowers. Grab the coffee filters in the middle and scrunch the filters up. Do this three or four times and then secure the bottoms with a pipe cleaner.

You could also use the colored coffee filters to make fun butterflies.

We love to bead in our house. Great for small muscle control and hand eye coordination. If you are cutting your own string, you can tape off the end to make it easier to thread the beads.

See what patterns your kids can make: can you make a necklace with all round beads, or all pink beads. Write out a pattern on a piece of paper and see if they can follow it: heart, square, heart, square or, perhaps round, round, square, round, round, square, etc.

We have a few large windows in the front of our house, and every month or so, we like to change things up. Everyone in our neighborhood compliments us on them and they can’t wait to see what we are going to do next. This one was a flower scene: we used contact paper with glitter for the centers of the flower and then construction paper for the rest. Use your imagination!

Other displays included a rainbow made from all hearts, and an underwater scene with fish, whales, and even an octopus!

Have your kids use their imagination and write a book! We got this “Make Your Own Little Golden Book” as a gift, but you could certainly just fold up some white paper in half and you’re good to go.

Paper plates are something we try and craft with in our house. Relatively inexpensive and you can make about a million different animals with them. We colored our plates and cut the plate to look like butterfly wings. Throw in a popsicle stick covered in pompoms and antennae made with a pipe cleaner and you are good to go.

I can’t remember where we saw the inspiration for these, but my kids loved making them. Get about 12 or so brown paper lunch bags. Glue them all in the same direction two or three at a time – this will make the cutting of the patter easier. After you cut your first two or three bags that have been glued together, add another two or three and repeat cutting out the pattern.

After you have all the bags glued together, take the first bag and glue it to the last bag and viola! you have a beautiful snowflake!

My kids LOVE science experiments, the messier the better (for them). One simple one is the reaction of baking soda and vinegar. We keep a bunch of these plastic egg cartons on hand (they are perfect for painting) – so just add a few drops of food coloring on the bottom of each space. Cover with baking soda. My kids like to guess what color each one will make!

Have the kids pour the vinegar on top of the baking soda and watch the colors bubble up! Or if you have droppers, those are certainly a good way to help with those fine muscle control skills!

Salt dough is super easy yo make, it’s just three ingredients: flour, salt and water. You can find the recipe here. Roll out the dough and cut them into fun shapes with cookie cutters. Cook for about 2 hours and let completely cool. We used paint markers, but really, any paint will do. If you want to give them an extended life, spray them with something like Modge Podge Sealer.

We took it one step further and made ornaments for friends. We placed them on their trees during the day so they could have a scavenger hunt for them later.

I’m not going to lie, this one is a little messy. We made nail polish rocks. Fill up a shallow pan with warm water. Pour in your choice of nail polish and quickly dip your rock (or object of choice) into the liquid – pull out immediately and place on a wax paper lined sheet pan.

You should be good for two dips, but after that, take a chopstick or something similar and swirl it around the water to collect the used nail polish and wipe on a paper towel to discard. Begin again with new polish. We found that flat, light colored (well white is the best) rocks were the best. Again, if you want them to last longer if you are placing them outside, use a sealer like Modge Podge on them.

We all have about a bazillion extra stickers at home. If you need 5 minutes of quiet time, get out a large piece of paper and, for example, draw a circle and a square on it. Have your kids place the square stickers in the square shape and the circle stickers in the circle. All other stickers that are not circles or squares can go in the blank space left on the paper.

And when all else fails, have them do some printables. Here are some of our favorites:

http://www.littlegoldenbooks.com/activities/

https://www.joshfunkbooks.com/stuff-for-kids

https://www.abicushman.com/fun-stuff

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Lately I’ve been a home-body. I’ve been cooking up big batch meals so I don’t have to cook every night, and to be honest, we have been eating out a lot too – I’m just tired by the end of the day, aren’t you?

In my head, winter should be over – I mean, we have had the big snow, it has been a frozen tundra, and just recently I was able to see grass again. Isn’t February the longest month? It’s around this time when I get a little stir crazy and need a vacation. Hopefully all this snow we just got will melt on Tuesday when it’s 60 degrees out.

I’m all about quick and easy – so these cute little single serve Key lime pies have been pretty popular in my house these days.  They are sweet and tart, and just bring a little brightness to this winter. I like Key Lime pies because they are 3 ingredients and take no time at all to make. I use Nelly and Joe’s Key West Lime juice (I may have even picked it up at Bed Bath and Beyond with my 20% off coupon). Here’s the recipe, super easy:

14oz can of sweetened condensed milk

3 egg yolks (don’t use the whites)

1/2 cup of Key West lime juice

Directions: Mix all ingredients together until smooth. Pour filling into pre-made graham cracker pie shells. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before placing in refrigerating.

Viola! Done. Take out and top with whipped cream and sprinkle with a little lime zest and you have yourself one fancy looking, it looks like I spent all day in the kitchen, dessert.

Enjoy!

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Holidays are about family and traditions. When I was a kid, we spent most of our holidays at my grandparents house in Newton. My grandmother was not a (good) cook, but there were a few special things that we looked forward to (and no, I’m not talking about that try colored jello mold with the fruit inside).

One of the things we loved the most was her chocolate pudding pie. For years as kids we thought that she slaved in the kitchen to make it, only to realize when we got older that it was a store bought graham cracker crust and chocolate pudding. And even though my grandmother has been gone for many years now, we still have her pies at family get-togethers. This year, my oldest brother brought one to the Thanksgiving dinner he was going to and my mother made one (although she swears my grandmother made it with whipped cream on top – but she didn’t….) for the dinner we had. I guess, in a way, it is our way of keeping her (and my grandfather) with us at the holidays.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday season – whatever you may celebrate!

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I’ve had cranberries on the brain lately, so Leah and I got together and made some tasty Cranberry Corn muffins, adapted from Ina Garten’s Raspberry Corn Muffin recipe. So first you will need Leah’s cranberry sauce recipe. If this were just me making cranberry sauce, I’d do the water, sugar and cranberry recipe, but Leah is way more fancy than that. She swears the recipe is super simple, and to be honest, I just made a batch and it really is (except I didn’t have the port, or the cloves, or the orange zest at my house, but hey, minor details…) Also, disclosure that I didn’t use flavored sugar, I just used regular old white granulated sugar.

Next you’ll need the recipe from Ina for her corn muffins, which you can find here. For our cranberry corn muffins, just swap out Ina’s 3/4 cup of good raspberry preserves for Leah’s cranberry sauce.

Leah had some fancy cornmeal from Plymouth or something like that. I had to go out and buy some from the market since I’m making these for Thanksgiving this year (yup, I steal most of Leah’s good ideas!) We whipped up the muffins in no time, even with the little hands in the kitchen slowing us down a bit…

Pop those muffins in the oven for 30 minutes and then you get these! They look beautiful as is, but we took to filling them with the delicious cranberry sauce.

If you’re like me and don’t have an apple corer at home, you can just fill a ziplock bag with the preserves and push the tip into the top of each muffin. Verdict, they’re delicious. Leah sent me home with a few and I have to admit, I didn’t share (oops)!

What is your favorite dish at Thanksgiving?

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