Holidays 2017: New Years

Night Before New Years Eve Party
For the last five years my mother and I have hosted a “Night Before” New Years Eve party at our ranch partly inspired by Jeffrey Katzenberg’s “Night Before” the Oscars party. Though his party is all about raising money for The Motion Picture and Television Fund, ours is more about the avoidance of hosting a big New Year’s Eve bash and all that that entails. The night before the big ball drop doesn’t hold quite the same pressure for off the charts merry making and allows for a quieter, more relaxed friends and family vibe. We’re still celebrating the season and ushering in a New Year with joy and laughter just without all the popping champagne bottles, riotous countdowns and forced smooching. I look forward to it every year and start planning menus and decor early November.Continue Reading

Holidays 2017: The Food

Holiday meals are just as important to me as the decor, the gifts and the cheer. In fact I’m not sure there would be any cheer for me without excellent food! My mother traditionally hosts Christmas Eve dinner and I host Christmas day. If I haven’t mentioned it before, my mother and I live only one short mile apart, which makes celebrating the holidays as a family much easier, among other things. Sharing the heavy lifting of preparing, serving and cleaning up major holiday meals where our whole family is in attendance is a pretty significant blessing. My mother worked extra hard this year to provide us with a beautiful Christmas Eve meal and is still worn out almost a month later from all the work. I think she may have gone a bit overboard, but hey, I’m not complaining. The food was to die for!Continue Reading

Holidays 2017: Christmas Decor

Christmas stockings
My mixed metals Thanksgiving table is what truly inspired my 2017 Christmas decor. I loved the look of all those glorious gleaming metals paired together in one cohesive way so I figured, why not carry the look into Christmas? I found relatively inexpensive shatterproof ornaments at Michaels that fit the theme perfectly and had a LOT of ornaments of my own I could mix in. I built myself another wreath for the front door with more finds from Michaels. Though I’m starting to run out of storage space for all these wreaths, maybe I’ll use a few for a fun giveaway and one of you who likes the look of them could use it for your next holiday inspired front door! Thoughts?Continue Reading