Your weekly gift guide to help inspire you and make your gift buying process a little bit easier this season!
Happy Cyber Monday and welcome to week 3 of our holiday gift guide! I can guarantee you that there is at least something here that your girlfriend, best friend, sister, or daughter wants for Christmas this year! I’ve polled all of my girlfriends and we are in agreement that this is a pretty comprehensive list of the average mid-20 year-old girl’s wish list! In fact, I love it all, so Mom, if you’re still looking for gifts, here you go! Especially #1 😉
Caramel apples are one of my absolute favorite desserts this time of year. I love incorporating them into my parties, but they can be so difficult to serve and just aren’t the most graceful things to eat! I am always struggling with how to bite into them or how to cut them and sometimes it just isn’t worth the hassle!
These Mini Caramel Apple Cheesecakes are the solution and are the perfect little treat for your holiday gathering this year. They pack in all of the tastiness of a caramel apple without all the stickiness on your hands and caramel stuck in your teeth! They are absolutely delicious and always a crowd pleaser. Especially for all those cheesecake lovers out there like myself!
Family, food, friends and football… This is what truly creates a perfect Thanksgiving!
So, of course, they were all featured in this year’s wonderful Friendsgiving party — which also happened to be festive, fabulous and FUN! 🙂 I hosted a group of friends for a potluck dinner, so they came with some tasty Thanksgiving bites and libations. But, every hostess has a few delicious ideas in mind for her dinners, so I had a small menu laid out in addition to what my guests brought to the table!
The fall festivities wouldn’t have been complete without the gorgeous farm table, chairs and place settings provided by my friends at Celebration Event Rental. The silvers, golds and coppers were complemented perfectly by the rich-colored woods in the table and my homemade centerpiece … Swoon. Seriously, y’all.
Two worlds collided at the fall party I recently hosted at my favorite gift and floral store in Dallas: My favorite shop and some of my favorite girls. The T Shop in Lakewood was generous enough to welcome the Circle Seven Five ladies and me into the shop for a hostess gift-making party!
In case you are not local or have not heard of Circle Seven Five, CSF is an absolutely amazing group of young professional Dallas women founded by the lovely Cassidy in order to help form friendships and a sense of community and belonging amongst a bustling city. If you are in your mid- twenties, you know how incredibly difficult it can be to make new and meaningful friendships, but through fun events at local shops, restaurants, work-out studios, etc., CSF helps to form these types of friendships and connections. I have absolutely loved being a part of this organization, and if you are in Dallas, I highly recommend looking into it! Plus, I got to host this amazing party for the CSF girls!
The T Shop is my absolute favorite local gift and flower shop here in Dallas. Owned by the incredible Lori Trent, she has created the most luxurious and beautiful boutique in Lakewood. If you are looking for a flower arrangement or gift for a party or a florist for your wedding, The T Shop is your place. It is my go-to location for all of my gifting needs, plus her arrangements are absolutely amazing. Lori and her team are so detail-oriented and every bouquet comes out looking like it was styled for a magazine. My mom sent me my first flower arrangement from the T Shop, and I kid you not, I emailed Lori and told her how in love with her flowers I was, and I wanted her to do my wedding one day! Seriously, she is amazing!
We started the fall festivities with a themed cocktail party, where I served a variety of appetizers and a signature drink. The space didn’t call for a full dinner, but the event was at 6 p.m. on a weeknight, so I didn’t want the CSF ladies to leave hungry! Some of the girls were only acquaintances, so I wanted to make sure there was an assortment of snacks to accompany the libations.
I came up with this tasty and festive menu that was an absolute hit amongst the girls!
The CSF ladies enjoyed their drinks and bites while mingling and shopping around the store for fun birthday or hostess gifts. The store owner’s daughter, Kiley, and I then gave a fun presentation to the girls about how to give the perfect hostess gift. We talked all about when gifts are appropriate, what types to give, and how you can personalize it for each hostess.
Whenever I host a party, I always like to include a signature cocktail as part of the menu. Wine and beer are a given at my events, but it’s always fun to create a craft cocktail that aligns with the theme and formality of the party. Having an open bar gets very pricey, so this is the best way to mix up the drink menu without blowing the budget.
This Sparkling Spiced Apple Cider Cocktail is the easiest craft cocktail to make for any type of fall or holiday party. Plus it is absolutely delicious and super festive! The spiced apple cider with the cinnamon just screams fall, doesn’t it?
One of my favorite parts of this recipe is that it can easily be made in large quantities. Often times, cocktails have to be made individually and specially crafted, which makes them harder to serve at large parties. This recipe is perfect for parties of all sizes and can be made and served in a large pitcher without losing any of its flavor or consistency.
Your weekly gift guide to help inspire you and make your gift buying process a little bit easier this season!
Alright, ladies! Let’s talk about what the 20-something year old man in our life wants this Christmas! Whether your boyfriend, husband, son, or brother loves the outdoors, beer, adventure, beards (I know mine sure does!), technology, or style, we’ve got you covered!
Here is week two of our holiday gift guide for the man in your life! (Let’s just hope my boyfriend skips over this post, so he doesn’t know what he is getting this year! 🙂 )
I am sure this will come as no shock to all of you, but one of my favorite parts of the holidays is all of the festive parties. I love that every Friday and Saturday night in December is filled with fun holiday extravaganzas. Whether it is a friend’s tacky Christmas sweater party or your corporate soireé, it is always so much fun to get dressed up and party hop between all of the different get togethers to see all of your friends and family.
With all of these events, I never want to arrive empty-handed, so I am always looking for new and festive recipes to bring that are quick and easy to prepare. These delicious Cranberry Brie Tarts fit the bill perfectly! They take a maximum of 15 minutes to prepare, yet look like you have spent all afternoon carefully crafting each one. The convenience doesn’t stop there! Besides being the simplest recipe ever to make, they are the perfect cocktail party grab-and-go appetizer. You can easily throw it on a napkin and don’t have to go through the balancing act of holding a plate in one hand and a cocktail in another! We all know what that’s like and it’s always a bonus when we can avoid it 🙂
When planning my dessert menu for a party, I almost always include cupcakes. Cupcakes are the perfect dessert for any party because they are so simple to customize. You can easily tailor the cupcake toppers to match the theme and formality of the event, plus with the wide variety of frosting and cake batter recipes there are to choose from, you are sure to find a combination that will suit everyone’s taste preferences!
I recently made these delicious Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with a Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting for a fall party that I hosted at The T Shop, and they were an absolute hit!
If you are looking for a cute hostess gift to bring to Thanksgiving dinner or a fun party, we’ve got you covered! These adorable DIY pumpkin flower arrangements are the perfect fall hostess gift, incorporating the number one fall essential (a pumpkin, of course!) and seasonal flowers!
These are SO easy to make, yet look so professional and thoughtful! Follow these quick and easy steps and you have got yourself the perfect hostess gift that’ll be sure to impress!
1. Start by picking out a small “pumpkin pie” sized pumpkin (that’s what they call them at the store) and seasonal flowers. I usually like to get an assortment of oranges, yellows, and reds for fall, plus a little bit of greenery for the base of the arrangement. If you are just buying these in your local grocery store, one bouquet is usually enough, but I tend to buy two so I can have some more diversity in colors. You’ll also need a small block of floral foam, which you can buy at Michael’s or your local craft store.
It is finally football season y’all! One of the best times of the year (besides Christmas, of course)! That means weekends filled with tailgates and game watching parties, cheering on your favorite teams and enjoying yummy football snacks!
During a TCU home game weekend, you will find us camping out on Saturday’s near Amon G. Carter Stadium jumping between tailgates and reminiscing with friends. However, away game weekends are a little bit harder to centrally gather all of our friends. Of course, there are always TCU game watching parties at the local bars, but sometimes it is nice to enjoy the game from the comfort of your home with some good friends!
I recently hosted a TCU game watching party at my apartment with about 20 of our friends. Kick off was at 3:45pm, so I had all morning to prepare my favorite game watching appetizers for our guests. Football snacks are the epitome of comfort food, so it is usually pretty easy to find some delicious warm dips, sliders, and nachos that the crowd will love. After a little bit of thought into each of my guest’s taste preferences, I came up with this delicious menu that was an absolute hit!
When hosting a game watching party, I recommend providing 4 to 5 appetizers (I usually divide the size of the party by 3 to determine how many appetizers…so 15 people attending divided by 3 equals 5 appetizers) and asking everyone to bring their favorite snack and beer as well. That way, you know for sure that you have the food handled in case someone forgets, and everyone else’s snacks are bonus! This menu was pretty simple and can be done the day of the party. However, since everything the day of a party takes about 25% longer than expected, I like to prepare as much as I can the night before. This menu is the perfect balance of night before and day of preparation.
I started off the night before making the Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupcakes. These can easily be refrigerated in an airtight container overnight, so you don’t have to worry for one minute about them the day of your party! The Spinach Artichoke Dip is also an easy appetizer to make the night before and refrigerate. Then all you have to do is pop it in the oven for about an hour before the party and serve!
As far as the day of goes, I woke up a little early to make the BBQ Pulled Chicken Sliders. These are an absolute breeze because they only take about 5 minutes of preparation and then the crock-pot will take over for the next 6-8 hours. Then all you have to do is assemble and enjoy! The majority of the day of preparation is for the Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Poppers, the Buffalo Chicken Wonton Cups , the Buffalo Chicken Nachos, and the Cinnamon Brown Sugar Popcorn. Each of these appetizers take about 45 minutes of preparation and cooking, so I would recommend starting each of these snacks about 2 hours prior to kick-off.
This menu is absolutely delicious and there is sure to be something that will please everyone!
