Christmas Home Tour

December 16, 2019December 15, 20191 Comment

Good morning! Only a little over a week and it’s Christmas! It is coming so fast, but I am enjoying all the special moments! I think I am ready and am looking forward to spending time with family and friends.

I realized I hadn’t shown you much of my home decorated for Christmas, so I thought I would give you a little tour today along with a little story.

Many year ago, when I was 6 years old, I was going to be an angel in the Christmas program at church.

I was excited to wear the white gown, the wings and the sparkly halo. I was going to be in front of the whole church along with 5 other little angels.

A week or so before the program, my parents went out for the evening and my older sister was babysitting. Well, as siblings will do, my older sister wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do…go to bed!

I held on to the cupboard knob under the sink while she tried to pull me to the bedroom. It was quite the tug-of-war and in the end, I came out with a broken pinkie finger!

This was quite traumatic for me! How could I be an angel on stage with a splint on my finger?! I just couldn’t do it!

My mom and dad tried talking me into still going on stage, my teacher talked to me too, but I just wouldn’t do it! Finally my mom offered me a bribe.

She told me I could open a Christmas present early if I would still go up on stage. That did it! What six year old doesn’t want to open a present early?! I finally went on stage on performance night and hid my splint under my fancy angel sleeve.

And you know what? I have no idea what the present was that I opened! I’m sure it was something special at the time, but I don’t remember it now. I don’t know why I was being so stubborn, but I’m sure glad my mom figured out a way to get me to go on stage!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and many happy memories with your family and friends! Thank you for stopping by today!

My Coastal Christmas Tree

December 6, 2019December 5, 20191 Comment

Today is the last day of 12 Days of Holiday Ideas! We made it all the way through! There are now hundreds of ideas to make your holiday merry and bright! If you want to go back and find all the bloggers and see what they have posted, here is the link. I hope you have enjoyed this series. I know Lauren and I both enjoyed putting it all together. Thanks you to Shirley and Erlene for working so hard to put this all together!

You can see all the other link ups at the bottom of the page. Be sure to check them out!

Now, Lauren and I were both supposed to show our Christmas Trees today, but SOMEBODY hasn’t even put hers up yet. Ahem. So, it’s just mine today!

I bought the flocked tree a couple of years ago, and I love how it fits with the rest of my living room! It shows off all the coastal ornaments so well. I have another tree in my family room as well, and that one has all the family ornaments, so this one is just fancy and fun.

Of course, I have included some starfish and some of my Shiny Brights. The diamond shaped mirror ornament is from my childhood. I have 3 sisters and we each received one of these mirrors in a different shape. I also see a few of my ornament exchange ones in this picture. Here is the link to this years exchange and if you type ‘ornament exchange’ in the search box, you can find the past years also.

I added this vintage sled to place some of the presents in and a cozy fur throw to snuggle up with.

I made these sparkly initial chipboard letters for each of us to add to the tree too.

My tree goes perfectly with all my other coastal items in the room. Thank you so much for joining us each post. Welcome to all our newcomers too! We can’t wait to meet you all and hope you continue to stop by! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

MEET OUR SPONSORS who have generously donated fabulous prizes for the Big Christmas Giveaway!

DecoArt winner will receive a prize package valued at $100!

Dixie Crystals/Imperial Sugar winner will receive a Keurig Coffee Maker valued at $100!

Oriental Trading winner will receive an OrientalTrading.com gift card valued at $200!

Cabot Cheese winner will receive a gift basket of Cabot products valued at $75!

Burlap Fabric winner will receive a prize pack of products valued at $50!

Zulay Kitchens winner will receive one Milk Frother and a Lemon Squeezer valued at $21

It’s Home To You winner will receive one wooden Santa sign valued at $65

Giveaway begins Nov. 8, 2019 and ends Dec. 6, 2019. Winners will be notified by December 13, 2019. Sponsors will ship each prize to the winner. There will be a total of seven winners, one for each prize. Drawing is by random selection using the Rafflecopter widget.

Must be 18 to win. Open to U.S. residents only.

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Perfectly Powdered Sugar Cake

December 2, 2019December 1, 20192 Comments

Good morning! We are getting closer to the end of the 12 Days of Holiday Ideas! How crazy is that? It has been an amazing journey and we have had so much fun getting all of these ideas. I hope you have enjoyed reading all of our posts and now have some ideas for your Christmas as well.

Welcome to the 5th annual 12 Days of Holiday Ideas event, hosted by Shirley of Intelligent Domestications and Erlene of My Pinterventures Between Nov. 11th and December 6th there will be hundreds of new ideas shared by over 55 Co-host bloggers!

Go here to see our kick-off collection of Holiday ideas as well as all of this years talented participating DIY and Foodie Blogs. Download this years November and December calendars with all of the topics and dates so you can make plans to watch for ideas!

We are hosting a BIG GIVEAWAY from our Sponsors this year! Be sure to scroll all the way down for more information and to enter to win!

Perfectly Powdered Sugar Pound Cake

*This blog post is sponsored by Dixie Crystals/Imperial Sugar. All opinions given in this blog post are my own.*

For a Christmas desert, what is the first thing you think of? Maybe pie, maybe cookies, or maybe a cake. All of these are fantastic ideas and Dixie Crystals powdered sugar can help you with all of your baking needs for the holiday. They were gracious enough to send us powdered sugar (about 10 pounds of it!) to use for all of our Christmas baking needs. So thank you to Dixie Crystals for the powdered sugar!

I really enjoy baking and decorating and I usually bring all of my baking creations to work for my coworkers to eat. But, I also like to bake for all of the holidays. And Christmas is no different. So, unfortunately, I am not skilled enough to make my own recipes, so I do have to find my recipes. And when I found this recipe it peaked my interest and I knew I had to make it. This recipe came from All Recipes, so thanks to them!

Ingredients

-1 1/2 cups butter

-3 1/2 cups Dixie Crystals Powdered Sugar

-6 large eggs

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-2 3/4 cups cake flour (I used regular flour and didn’t have any issues)

-1/4 cup sliced almonds

Instructions

Step 1: Slice and Dice Your Almonds

This step may be unnecessary if you purchased sliced almonds, but I could not find sliced almonds. So I had to slice and dice my almonds first. Dixie Crystals sent us this awesome baking mat that I was able to use. It was really nifty for chopping or cutting. Or you could use it for rolling out fondant or decorating cookies. This baking mat has many different uses and it is so nifty!

Step 2: Mix Your Butter and Powdered Sugar

Before you actually start this step, preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

I had some trouble with this step. According to the recipe online, you had to take the butter and mix it until it was creamy. NOW! My butter was not soft enough to make creamy. I did wait long enough for the butter to be soft (I am very impatient haha), so I did have some difficulty with the mixing of it. The recipe then says to add the 3 1/3 cups of powdered sugar slowly until the batter is light and fluffy. And since my mixture wasn’t very creamy, it was slightly hard to make the mixture light and fluffy. It kind of ended up like a ball of dense…mush.

Step 3: Add the Egg, Vanilla, and Flour

The next step is add the 6 eggs one at a time and to mix after each one. I understand why it needs to be mixed in one at a time because it helped to make my dense mush into a less dense mush. It actually started to look a batter! You then add the 1 teaspoon of vanilla and mix it before adding the 2 3/4 cups of flour. I added the flour in smaller increments (1 cup, 1 cups, and then 3/4 cup) because I was slightly concerned that my now slightly watery mush wouldn’t mix with that much flour in the bowl. Honestly, I’m happy that I did it that way because it helped to mix the batter more evenly.

Step 4: Prepared the Pan

The recipe calls for a regular bundt pan, but I used a pan that had 6 smaller bundt cake forms in it. The first thing to do to prep the pan is the HEAVILY butter it and flour it. I ended up over flouring the pan and had to dump the excess out. You then add the sliced (or diced) almonds into each bundt form and tilt the pan to coat the inside with the almonds. This might work better if you have the sliced almonds, but my diced almonds did not want to spread out.

Step 5: Pour the Batter

This step is self explanatory. Basically, just fill the bundt pan (or pans) and smooth out the top to make sure it is even. I overfilled my pan but I also didn’t have any other pans to use for the excess batter. So super fluffy cake it is!

Step 6: Bake

The recipe calls for you to bake your cake for about 1 1/2 hours. I didn’t think that my little cakes would need the full 1 1/2 hours, so I actually set my timer for 1 hour and checked on them. And they were perfect! I was able to slide a toothpick in and out with no excess cake on it. Hooray!

Step 7: Let Cake Cool and Make Icing

Let the cake cool in the pan for 5 minutes before gently sliding a knife around the edges of the pan and flipping the pan over. While the cake is cooling (for about an hour) you can make your icing. You don’t have to make the icing, I did just because I was afraid the cake wouldn’t be moist enough. So I mixed 2 cups Dixie Crystals powdered sugar with about 2 tablespoons of milk to make the icing. You can use more or less of both ingredients until you get the consistence you want!

Step 8: Enjoy!

How delicious does this look? It was very tasty, very DENSE, but very tasty. It tastes great with a cup of milk or a cup of coffee, whichever you fancy. But all together, this cake is delicious and is something I will be making again. Let me know what you think and let me know if you try this yourself! Thanks for stopping by!

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