Valentine’s Day is coming up quickly. I wanted to show you some cute baskets that I put together for the kids last year to give you inspiration as you shop this year. The wire baskets are from Target, and I use them for a bunch of things year round. The acrylic tags were personalized with the kid’s names and I found them on Etsy. The seller is on a break, but I am sure that you could find something similar. I love these Kid Made Modern heart water color sets. You can find other brands on Amazon. The heart goggles aren’t available, but the same brand offers a heart style here. I picked up a fun note pad from TJ Maxx and one of those light spinners that my kid’s love. The big hit here was the unicorn chapstick and the jelly beans!

The boys are always a little harder to shop for, but I found these cute shirts at J.Crew saying “Heartbreaker”. They don’t have the same baseball shirt style this year, but here is a similar shirt. I love the Rey to Z hats, you can get them with lots of different things on them: letters, big bro, little bro, auntie, etc. You can’t have any gift basket in this house without Pokemon cards, and of course a little chocolate (and only the best, Gräem for the win!)

For the littlest, we picked up a fun art kit that the big kids could help her with, a hat – because we are into backwards hats these days, but also a few hair bows and clips that we had been saving for a while (we went though a period of not wanting to put anything in our hair) and are just getting into fun stuff now! Throw in some delicious chocolate from Gräem, a simple heart tee from target, and a fun necklace and she is one happy kid!

Are dessert boards a thing anymore? Asking for a friend. Either way, I still love them. Added in all of my favorite things and if they aren’t in anymore…well more for me I guess Homemade chocolate covered pretzel rods, macarons (and these days you can pick them up at Whole Foods if you’re in a pinch), my favorite cookies from Bisous Sweet (it doesn’t have to be Valentine’s Day for me to get these, frankly, any day that ends with a ‘y’ will do!) and some red candies to fill in the empty spaces.

Don’t forget to show your gal pals the love this Valentine’s day. I love single serve bottles of bubbly. Pop on a cute tag (these are my favorite – Little Notes from E. Frances Paper) and drop off as a little reminder of how fabulous you think they are!

One of my favorite bakeries made these cookies years ago and I had to reshare them because they are so cute! They have closed their doors for walk in retail, but you can still order cakes online!

Make sure to check out Love And Flour, their cakes are beautiful.

I love a good m&m cookie on Valentine’s Day, they make a bold pop of color!

I love a good sheet pan meal, pancakes are no exception. Use your favorite pancake recipe but make on a baking sheet. Cook at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes. They come out light and fluffy and you can cut them out into cute shapes with cookie cutters – and everyone gets warm pancakes at the same time!

Don’t want to make sheet pan pancakes, try making them in muffin tins. My second favorite way to make quick meals for the whole family – and everyone gets to eat a hot meal at the same time! My kids think that eating anything with a toothpick is more fun, so we found these cute heart food picks to use and we let them dip them in whipped cream and sprinkles! What is your favorite pancake topping?

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This was an especially long holiday break – what felt like 30,303.948.505,404,980 days long. We didn’t go away and only had a few day things planned. Keep it simple. That’s what I kept telling myself. So on the one hand, vacation went by very quickly, but on the other hand, the days dragged on.

In the theme of keeping it simple, I wanted to show you our awesome console table, that we actually go a while ago, but just dressed up for the holidays. It’s from a company called Vinna Home and Kitchen and they have these amazing modern console tables. They can make your table in any number of stain colors and any variety of sizes. Home delivery was white glove and we couldn’t have been more satisfied with the customer service. We bought two to run the length of our couch.

With all the baking that I did this year for friends and teachers etc. I didn’t make cookies for Santa – we outsourced. Thanks Cookie Monstah for the assist! We left Santa with options!

Their Burlington location is a breeze to get to, and they have a great selection. I loved that they asked me when I was ordering if I wanted to put the peanut butter cookies in a separate box (even though I didn’t have allergies, I’m not sure I would have even thought of it if I were getting these as gifts – which I did get one box for friends as long as I was here!) And how cute is the artwork on the box by Elissa Surabian?!?! She is a local chalkboard artist, you may have seen her work around town!

Speaking of friends, for my best gal pals and neighbors, I picked up some of our favorite cookies. It’s a tradition that I get them gingerbread girls or boys from The Gingerbread Construction Co. and for a little glam I picked up these cute holiday gift sets by Essie.

In an effort to make alllll of the Christmas magic happen in such a short amount of time – here is a look at everyone’s “stockings”. We tried to do fewer presents this year, and more “experiences”. For example, we paired each big with a little and they got to go into the city to do a fun gingerbread house decorating event. One pair went to the Langham Hotel and one pair went to Eastern Standard Kitchen. Stay tuned to see how much fun we had there in another post.

Back to our “stockings”. We use Sea Bags bucket bags instead of a traditional stocking. I think it started from our apartment days when we didn’t actually have a mantel, but can’t actually remember. I feel like every year the ante is “upped” and just because it fits in a stocking doesn’t mean it should go in a stocking I mean, when I was a kid, it was like candy and toothbrushes, and now I look, and I am totally guilty of this, I’m putting in $30 Owala water bottles (insert eye roll). I mean, but at least they don’t leak in the kid’s backpacks, right?

So for the big we got an Owala, a fun Stanley key chain/ornament whatever, a gold bubble necklace from Anthropologie, books for her Yoto Box, a cute Caboodles kit because it reminded me of my childhood, and a Squishmallow mystery bag.

For the youngest we picked up a Bluey brush, a Squishmallow surprise mystery bag, some holiday nail stickers, a Yoto story, some fun glow in the dark bandaids from Welly, Squishmallow hair claws, a monogram necklace and some fun ooly metallic pens.

For our oldest, we picked out various boxes of sports cards, a bunch of new Yoto stories, some Burt’s Bees lip balm, and an autographed version of the new book, The Bletchley Riddle, by Ruta Sepetys.

Dad was pretty straightforward, a few bags of his favorite coffee beans, a new razor, and some hair putty. Things are almost as fun when you are a dad as when you are a mom…..almost.

And finally, for the other little, we picked up an Owala with a boot, a new Pokemon book and a little sweet treat. Not pictured were a few Beyblades that came in last minute!

Remember when this blog was about food?! Right, me too. Stopped in to Lola’s pre-Christmas week to get one of their amazing chocolate chip ricotta pies. Not going to lie, I also picked up some frozen meals to give as gifts. We all have that one “uncle” who can’t cook and gets take out every night of the week (oh, wait, that’s just us?) and we figured a weeks worth of home (just not my home) cooked meals would be a great way to start his new year off right! I picked up a few for us to throw in the freezer as well, because let’s be honest, after a huge ramp up and all the Christmas magic we moms are making, once Christmas is over, come December 26th, I know that at least I don’t want to do ANY cooking!

Since we were home all vacation, we picked up quite a few friend’s mail. One of those perks was that they brought us home treats from their travels – and these beauties were some of the favorites from Standard Baking Company in Portland, ME.

Since I was baking so many cookies this year, I thought that maybe some people would be feeling like they were getting too many cookies this season (I mean, personally I NEVER feel that way….but maybe some people do). I figured I would try making cookie dough for friends. This way, they could make cookies when it was convenient for them. They could pull them out of the freezer and make one or make them all. So I found this great easy recipe by Melissa, from Design, Eat, Repeat and made her Freezer Cookie Dough. Super big hit. Some friends made them right away, some waited to make fresh cookies on Christmas, and some saved for later! I have made so many batches since, and keep them in my freezer – I grab when the kids are running out the door to play dates and I have nothing to bring – and it has saved the day in many instances! Here is the best part, you melt the butter, so no mixer required! Customize for the holidays using holiday m&m’s or even try and use that left over holiday candy as mix ins!

By the time I got around to making these cupcakes I don’t want to even tell you how many sticks of butter I had gone through already… but had to change things up from making so many cookies! I pick up sprinkles from every place I go – I even got these cute sugar snowflakes from Market Basket!

I love homemade gifts. I love seeing what people choose to give, or what their strong suits are. I love the thought and care that goes into something home made.Peppermint chocolate was a popular choice this year, which is totally up my alley. 10/10.

Our other neighbor brought us these adorable candy cane cookies and hot cocoa cookies, complete with full sized marshmallows. I applaud anything that you have to make two colors of dough for…I’m a strictly one bowl or it’s too much work kind of gal!

One friend brought us TWO boxes of cookies, maybe because we have so many people in our family Don’t see me complaining though! The chocolate s’mores cookies were #1 with the kids. I think the exact quote was, “the marshmallows are perfectly cooked” and “we should invite them over for s’mores one time”.I mean, that was perfect because that distracted them from the other cookies haha. Anything with jelly is A+ in my book, but also, cut out cookies impress me, because, again, that extra step goes a long way! Extra points for the fancy divider in the box, way above and beyond.

Teacher gifts were basically Girl Scout cookies this year, but to the extra special ones, we gave a little something more, and I’m not talking about the corny puns. But we couldn’t just give a gift card, so these cute treasure boxes we had from Bullseye’s Playground at Target filled with Lindt chocolate, a gift card and a tag saying, “you’re a treasure” were just enough to brighten a few days! Top off with a classic ribbon and a little sparkle.

I do also love a good Chex Mix, and this year was no different. Made a large batch, although had to do it solo this year, Isabelle was not around to do the bag shaking! Silly easy to make and a crowd favorite. Put in a cute tin or tie up with a pretty bow in a cellophane bag and you have a great little holiday treat.

Speaking of gift giving, one of my go to gifts I love to give people with kids is a gingerbread cookie making kit. Wilson Farms sells these plain cookies on packs of 2, and icing in fun colors. I pick up bright colored candy and add to a fun basket, throw in some tissue or paper shred and VIOLA! Simple and fun holiday gift for the whole family that will get them a whole 5 minutes of peace. OK, maybe 3. And yes, that is the viral CVS nutcracker in the background that I got 40% off with a coupon

No holiday would be complete without a stop to Clear Flour Bread. I used to live in Brookline and have really good memories of all the delicious things they had during the holidays (and all the delicious smells). So we lucked out one day, when the weather was not too cold and the line was not too long, and picked up these delicious treats. Not shown are the four loaves of bread we also bought

And to end this post, a look at what we did for our holiday cookie box. We went very kid friendly this year. Although my son’s friend told me that he was very upset that I did not put the Pillsbury slice and bake Christmas tree cookies in the box. Way to keep me humble my friend, and on my toes. I’ll keep that in mind for next year! So getting back to this year.

Chocolate M&M Cookies by Cooking with Karli

Sparkling Shortbread Cookies by E2 Bakes Brooklyn

Holiday colored Rice Krispie Treats

Sugar Cookies drizzled with chocolate and dressed up with holiday sprinkles

The post Christmas 2024: Full Hearts, Even Fuller Stomachs appeared first on A Little Bit About a Lot of Things.

With summer in full swing, and summer birthdays or bbq’s every other weekend, I love the idea of bringing a retro cooler filled with fun beverages as a gift. I picked up this fun Polarbox cooler and filled it with all kinds of fun drinks for the summer.

You could do alcoholic or non alcoholic versions of this – we did hard lemonades, rose and some “beach juice”. You could also add some fun snacks for a full on the go experience.

What would you throw in a cooler for the day?

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I’m always looking for something crafty to give to our teachers along with a gift card, whether it be for Teacher Appreciation Week, the holidays or end of the year gifts. I found these wreath frames at Michael’s. I always buy extra boxes of crayons in September when they are $1 during the back to school sales, so these were pretty inexpensive to make.

I used a hot glue gun to do the first row of crayons and then did a second row on top to fill in the gaps. Add a picture hanger on the back and this is done in less than 30 minutes! I left mine plain, but you could certainly add your teacher’s name or a bow to make it a bit more fancy. What are your go to teacher crafts?

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Sometimes I get stuck on birthday gift ideas. I get into this rut of the same craft kits from Target, that, let’s be honest, are a little bit junky. After Easter I buy these buckets for about $1 each. They come with stickers, so you can personalize each one with the child’s name, or, you could personalize with a Cricut or paint pens. We picked up our own craft supplies: markers of different sizes, crayons, stickers, washi tape, construction paper. You could get as creative as you want: model magic, slime, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, pom poms, glitter, pony beads, washi tape, the possibilities are endless. What are your go to birthday gift ideas?

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I refuse to shop for the holidays before December 1st. Black Friday shopping just isn’t for me, there isn’t anything I want, or can think of, that I would wait in line for 5 hours to buy. Don’t even get me started on those stories you hear about people getting in fights over the last _____ (fill in the blank). I like to shop small whenever I can, although I have to admit sometimes I do shop at the mall because with young ones at home, you need to be all about the one stop shopping. This year, cyber Monday was big for me. Having everything delivered to my house is so convenient! No dealing with the mall and crowds and parking spaces!

So here are my picks for bags and babies, not a huge list, but just products I love. For the bags, starting top left and going clockwise: STATE bags,  Long Wharf Supply Company, Sea Bags and Ame and Lulu.

So let’s start with STATE bags, I love what they’re company stands for. For each bag purchased, one fully-stocked backpack is hand-delivered to an American child in need. How good does that make you feel? The company was founded by Scot and Jacq Tatelman and they have partnered with some big names, ahem: Beyonce and Jessica Alba. They have a really nice variety of bags and backpacks, I love the Graham tote bag, shown above in “olive multi”. The bag goes for $70 and for an extra $20 you can personalize it. Check out their videos on their about us page, I dare you to watch and not want to go out and buy a dozen bags after watching!

Long Wharf Supply Co. is a local company, founded in 2015. They have some great looking nautical bags that I am going gaga over. This Ipswich weekender bag goes for $275 and is perfect for a weekend getaway. It’s made of waxed canvas and bridle leather  – sturdy and fashionable.

I may have a (small) addiction to Sea Bags. I have half a dozen tote bags. Here’s what I love about them, they are locally made in Portland, Maine. They are made from recycled sails. You can buy bags from the collection (like the anchor tote on the bottom left) or you can have one personalized with anything you can dream up. I love the extra large totes, I have some with zippers and some without. They are great for travel, when I go away with the kids I just throw all of their stuff in their Sea Bag (those two on the right are ones I monogrammed with their initials) and go. Another thing I love about them, I don’t have to worry about them getting dirty, if they do, just wipe them off! They carry “bucket bags” which I use at the holiday time instead of stockings.

I love the cosmetic brush bag from Ame and Lulu. For $18 it is a steal and if perfect for anyone on your list. It’s canvas with a vinyl interior so you can wipe it down easily. It comes in a half a dozen cute patterns but I’m partial to the elephants!

Gifts for babies. There are so many things out there it’s hard not to buy everything I see. Here are a few of my favorites: Milkbarn swaddle blankets, Slumberkins, Haptic Lab blankets and I love all toys that are wooden.

Milkbarn makes swaddles, stroller blankets, onesies, hooded towels, loveys, and burpies in a bunch of adorable patterns. I’m partial to the hedgehogs, the elephants and the whales. They are super soft right out of the box but get even softer after you wash them a few times. I like these because they are a little different, you don’t see everyone using these at your music class or at daycare.

I’m not a huge fan of stuffed animals in general, but bought a slumberkins for my son a while back. I love the Yeti – it comes in two different weights (medium and ultra plush) and two different face colors (ice blue and snow white). They are a bit on the pricier side but my son adores his. The slumberkins are hand stitched by two moms in the Pacific Northwest. I love anything personalized, so for an additional $10 you can get your child’s name sewn on the back.

Haptic Lab is based out of Brooklyn, NY and they make these awesome quilts. They are city quilts and the stitching on it is a map of Brookline, Somerville and Cambridge. You can have up to three locations personalized (the red stars on our quilt). I had our house and where my son was born added for an additional $25. They also put his initials and his date of birth in the corner. This is a great heirloom gift that I know he will treasure when he grows up. Prices start at $219 for this design.

I really like wooden toys, they give me a sense of nostalgia – plus they encourage imaginative play which I love. You can pick up a set on Amazon for under $20.

Stay tuned for more gift guides this week! Leave me a comment and let me know what your favorite bags and baby gifts are for this season.

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  Forlan y Cia 14 Worked Glass Vintage Seltzer Bottle from the Seltzer Shop, $195

Malta Lantern from Pottery Barn, $119 for the large and $249 for the extra large

Monogram pillow made from sailcloth from Sea Bags, $155.

The Big Tasty sampler from EH Chocolatier, $28. The sampler includes: ancho bar, beernut bar, caramelized white chocolate bar, crispy milk bar, chocolate chew, coconutty bar, peanut butter crunch bar, pecan cluster, rocher, and a toffee crunch bar.

Other choices from EH Chocolatier would be the petite pumpkin pie macarons, $14.

Glass birds in love ornament, made by Glak Love, ornaments made from vintage film negatives, $16.

Lid Lifters from Container Store, $6.99

Organic Body Scrub from Organic Bath Co. $27. While the scrubs come in wonderful scents like RefreshMINT, SubLime, Zesty Morning, Stress Less and Spiced Cacao – I love the “Naked” product, unscented and 100% organic – it exfoliates and hydrates while removing dirt and dead skin.

The Elle bangle from Sarah Chloe, shown in gold but love the sterling silver too, $129.

The Samsung NX Mini, sold at Best Buy $449.  Comes with a 9-27mm lens that you can switch out with other lenses (sold separately) and has built in wi-fi.

Gold Tip Spout Apothecary Dispenser from Haven, $25.

Foil stamped Boston map from Minted, 11×14, $98 including frame.

Elizabeth and James blue sapphire bangle from Anthropolgie, $218.

Bicycle paintings, oil on canvas, by Red Bicycle Gallery, $125.

What is your go to gift this holiday season?

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