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

Baby Boy Kelley!

My mother very graciously threw Josh and I the most beautiful and celebratory baby shower last weekend and I just had to share the details with you! She asked me for some direction on the decor and the vibe I was hoping for, so I headed straight to Pinterest to cultivate a look for the shower that spoke to not only the holidays, but also our mountain home in Utah where the baby will be born. I loved that my mom involved me and that I got to contribute my ideas. I’m kind of a control freak on occasion…ok more often than not, so getting to have a voice when it came to the shower was pretty awesome for me!Continue Reading

The Giving Spirit

Christmas Cookies

Gifts… what to get, who wants what, does anybody in my life really need more stuff?! These are the questions I ask myself every November as I start to prepare for Christmas.

I’ve always loved giving gifts, finding that perfect something for that perfect someone, but for the last few years I’ve found myself becoming increasingly flustered and stressed with gift giving. I’m not sure if it’s that I’ve simply run out of ideas for cool stuff to buy or if everyone in my life has run out of room for all that cool stuff. Either way, I’ve decided to change my gift giving tune.Continue Reading