First, I covered the wreath with ribbon.  I actually forgot to buy ribbon for this step, but I found some red glittery ribbon in my stash to use.  It was sheer, but I made it work anyway.

It seems there are several different techniques for how to fold your cupcake liners for a wreath.  I decided to keep things simple and just folded my cupcake liners in half.  I originally tried folding the cupcake liners more, didn’t like the section I glued, and ripped them all off.  I’ve seen that technique used effectively, but for some reason I couldn’t get the hang of it.

I applied hot glue to a small section (maybe 1 inch) then stuck on the cupcake liners as quickly as possible.  Then repeated all the way around the wreath.  I used about 250-275 cupcake liners.

Once I finished the cupcake liners, I hot-glued these felt flowers (also purchased at Hobby Lobby).

An easy wreath for Valentine’s Day!

HOWEVER, since I was already planning on putting together some goodies for The Picky Apple to have at the hospital (after seeing this on Pinterest), I thought I’d make it a two-fer and give it as an anniversary gift.

I included several things he asked to have for snacks (almonds, peanut butter, apples, Goldfish) and several things I know he likes (Reeses Pieces, Snickers, string cheese, Diet Dr. Pepper, peanut butter and cheese crackers).  The Picky Apple has already seen the snacks because he unloaded my groceries from the car after I got home from the grocery store yesterday.  (See what I mean?!  He’s great!)  I spent about 5 minutes throwing this basket together.  Since my focus the last couple days has been on deep cleaning the house, I decided my time was better spent cleaning than making the “perfect” little tags for the gift basket with scrapbook paper and fun scissors.  I’m sure The Picky Apple understands.  In fact, I think he’d much rather have a gunk-free, science-experiment-free refrigerator than adorable gift tags on his hospital snacks.  So he got random, but oh-so-colorful paint chips instead.

I tried to incorporate the snack title in as many of the labels as possible: for the nuts, “I’m NUTS for you!”, for the goldfish, “There are lots of FISH in the sea, but you’re the only one for me!”.  You get the idea.  But for several, I just wrote a sweet note.  The Diet Dr. Pepper note says “You’ve been such a great dad to Finley and I can’t wait to see you hold our new baby boy!”

Happy Anniversary, Nathan!  I love you!

This Pomegranate Hazelnut Holiday Salad with Maple Bacon Dressing is one AMAZING salad!  I’ve thrown this salad together at least 3 times in the last month, and I just can’t get enough of it.  I suppose I’m a little slow jumping on the pomegranate band-wagon: until I made this salad, I don’t think I’d had pomegranate or pomegranate juice.  But now I love those messy little seeds with all my heart!

And then there’s the dressing…made of maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and….wait for it….bacon grease.  It really doesn’t get any better than that.

In order to make this salad a little more filling for a lunch or dinner (and to get some extra protein), I add grilled chicken or turkey (as in the photo, taken shortly after Thanksgiving) and crumbled goat cheese.  I think the goat cheese pairs well with the bacon and pomegranate flavors, but other cheeses would probably work great too!

Pomegranate Hazelnut Holiday Salad with Maple Bacon Dressing

recipe adapted from Lauren’s Latest

Ingredients:

• 8 cups Mixed Greens
• 12 slices Bacon, cooked and crumbled (save your bacon grease, see below!)
• ¾ cups Chopped, Toasted Hazelnuts
• 1 whole Pomegranate, Peeled And Arils Removed
• 1 cup chopped grilled chicken or leftover turkey
• 3/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
• 3 Tablespoons Warm Bacon Grease (reserved From Cooking The Bacon)
• 2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
• 2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
• Salt And Pepper, to taste

To make salad: Toss greens, bacon, hazelnuts, pomegranate, grilled chicken/turkey, and goat cheese together in a bowl.

To make dressing: Place bacon grease, maple syrup, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper (if using) into a small jar and shake until combined. Pour dressing over salad, toss and serve immediately.

One special thing we did this year was the Family Thumbprint Christmas Tree Ornament (you can see 2 pictured above).  I wanted a way to document our last year as a family of 3, and I thought this would be a cute way to do it.  We pressed our thumbprints into the dough before baking, and then I colored them each a different color and added some details and our name with a black fine-tip Sharpie.  Next year, we’re going to need a bigger tree ornament to fit all 4 of our thumbprints!  This was actually the only salt dough ornament that went on the tree.

The rest were used for gift tags!  Part necessity because we ran out of gift tags, part “okay, what do we do with all of the ornaments now that we made them?”  Aside from their slightly delicate nature (I did accidentally break one when I stacked a few presents on top of each other), I LOVE the way the salt dough ornaments look as gift tags.  I wrote on them with a fine tip sharpie.

One batch of dough made plenty for us!

Salt Dough Ornaments

recipe from The Happy Housewife

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup warm water

Mix together flour and salt.  Then mix in the warm water.  Mix until you have a dough that is similar in consistency to pie crust.  Take the dough and place it on a floured surface.  Roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 inch thick.  Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. If you don’t have cookie cutters you could use a glass to cut circles.  Put the shapes on a cookie sheet.  Then take a sharp object (I used a meat thermometer) to put a small hole in each shape where you will insert the ribbon. Make sure the hole goes all the way through the dough, because it will close up slightly while baking.  Bake the salt dough ornaments for 4 to 6 hours at 200 degrees or until hardened.  Paint and decorate as desired!

As for the Reindeer Bites Cookies…what’s not to love?  These cookies are simple to make, and even though they look rather plain, there are so many wonderful add-ins: the coconut-shredded AND coconut extract, graham cracker crumbs AND pieces, caramel bits and chocolate chunks.  The batter of these cookies reminded me very much of the Samoas/Caramel deLite Girl Scout Cookies.  So yes, I indulged in cookie dough batter.  Again.  And suffered for it.  Again. You would think I would have learned my lesson by now….but I just couldn’t resist this delicious cookie dough!  I’m guessing Santa’s reindeer are going to enjoy these too.

Here’s the recipe, in case you want an extra special treat for the reindeer when they visit your house…

Reindeer Bites Cookies

recipe from Six Sisters Stuff

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c. butter flavored shortening (Picky Apple Note: I substituted real butter for this!)
• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. coconut extract
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 c. flour
• 1 c. graham cracker crumbs
• 1 c. caramel bites
• 1 c. coconut
• 1 c. chocolate chunks
• 1/4 c. graham cracker chunks

Now that The Littlest Apple is out of school for the Christmas break, I can share this great Foot Soak I made for his preschool teachers.  I’ve created homemade scrubs before (for Mother’s Day), but this gift idea caught my eye on Pinterest because it was a foot soak, not a scrub, and included peppermint tea.  Also, it wasn’t super oily like lots of other scrubs.  Teachers who are on their feet all day herding preschoolers deserve something luxurious and refreshing to soak their tired feet in at the end of the day, don’t you think?!  (Not a bad idea for pregnant women either, so I made myself a batch too!)  This soak was amazingly easy to make, and The Littlest Apple enjoyed helping me stir together the ingredients.  I packaged it in these jars that I just love (I bought some of mine at Garden Ridge Pottery and some at Hobby Lobby), and kept my labeling and ribboning to a minimum (mostly because I made about 10 of these and got burnt out by the ribboning stage).

I paired the foot soak with a Rice Heat Therapy Pack containing eucalyptus essential oils, also hand sewn by me.  Yes, 10 of them.  I’m glad to have that marked off my To Do list!  I found a super cute fabric on sale at Hobby Lobby, and I’m already itching to use it for myself somehow.

I’m kicking myself for not getting any better pictures of this stuff for you.  The pictures I do have were taken at night and are pretty awful.

Peppermint and Lemon Foot Soak

recipe from Or So She Says…

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sea salt (a great alternative would be Kosher salt)
• 1 cup Epsom salt (usually found in the personal care/pharmacy aisle)
• 2 Tbsp peppermint tea (Be careful not to confuse this with “peppermint flavored” tea: the tea should be 100% peppermint leaves. Tip: if you can’t find it in bulk, buy a box of tea-bags, cut them open and measure!)
• 4 tsp pure peppermint extract
• 3 tsp pure lemon extract
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp baking soda

Combine the sea salt and Epsom salt in your mixing bowl. When the two salts are completely blended, add olive oil, peppermint extract and lemon extract. Stir each time you add an ingredient, making sure to break apart any large chunks of salt with your spoon. Once these liquid ingredients have been fully incorporated, your salt mixture will look like moist sand (and it will smell pretty good too!). Now it’s time to add the cornstarch and baking soda. Again, blend thoroughly, breaking apart any large clumps of baking soda or salt.  Almost done! Now add the final ingredient – the peppermint leaves. (I add this last, because I’ve found that adding them early in the process causes the leaves to bruise and give off their green color to the salt.) Stir the leaves in until they are fully blended with the salt mixture. Go ahead and take a deep breath while you’re at it – it should have a very refreshing scent!

At this point, if you’re planning on keeping the foot soak for yourself, store it in an air-tight container so it stays fresh. If the container is not air-tight, the beautiful aroma of the extracts and the peppermint leaves will fade. (The soak will still be useful, just not as charming!)

Instructions for Use: Fill a small basin with warm water and stir in ¼ to ½ cup of foot soak. Stir it to dissolve the salts, and soak your feet for 10-15 minutes. Ahhhh…

We used plastic hammers and real nails to hammer buttons onto a styrofoam cone to make a button Christmas tree.  The Littlest Apple stuck with this for longer than expected, but did get a little frustrated with some of our buttons that had extra-large holes (because they kept falling off the nails).  I went with a white cone because a) that’s all I could find and b) I thought it would make a pretty snow-covered backdrop for our green and red buttons since I knew we wouldn’t be completely covering the tree.  If you want it to look more like a Christmas tree, you could use a green styrofoam cone.

What activities do you have planned to keep your kids busy while they’re out of school for the Christmas break?

This salad looks absolutely gorgeous, and unlike some gimmicky food presentations, this one tastes delicious too!  Loads of greens, chopped apples, pears, strawberries, blueberries, nuts and gorgonzola.  (If you’re not a fan of the stinky blue cheeses, goat cheese or feta would also be excellent here).  Due to a small mishap (I forgot to buy poppyseeds), I wound up using a bottled dressing instead, but I will definitely be preparing the Lemon Poppyseed Dressing next time.

If you’re looking for something healthier to bring to a holiday party over the next few weeks, I’d definitely recommend this salad!

Winter Berry Salad Wreath with Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing

recipe from roomag.com

Ingredients:

• 1 head of Iceberg lettuce (Picky Apple note: I used red and green romaine)
• 4 cups mixed greens
• 1 cup spinach
• 2 bunches grapes
• 1 apple (chopped)
• 1 Pear (chopped and sliced for decoration)
• 6 Strawberries (2 whole for decorating the rest chopped)
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• 1/2 cup cashews (Picky Apple Note: I used walnuts.  Pecans would be yummy too!)
• 1/2 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese (Picky Apple Note: Feta or goat cheese would also work)
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 Tbsp diced fresh onion
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp poppy seeds
• 2/3 cup olive oil

Place iceberg lettuce around a round plate.  Top with mixed greens.  On both sides of “wreath” make a decoration with spinach leaves, then add bunches of grapes to each side, fanned pears and whole strawberries. Be as creative as you wish.  To the salad add chopped apples, pears, strawberries, blueberries, dried cranberries, cashews and crumbled gorgonzola cheese.

For dressing: Squeeze the juice of one lemon (1/2 cup) and pour into food processor or blender. Add honey, onion, dijon mustard, poppy seeds, and olive oil. Pulse until well blended.

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