We thought it would be fun to do a taco truck birthday theme this year so we called on our friend Sarah to do this really fun cake topper for the “mom made cake”. I basically just said, let’s do something fun and Sarah took off with the idea. I mean, how cute did it come out? We added some other fun pinwheels to the cake (to hide my not smooth icing) but the truck did all the heavy lifting!

We had a make your own taco bar for guests which was a big hit – and a big hit with me because there was so little clean up!

Three is still a little too little to have a friend birthday party in our house (we just aren’t ready yet), so instead, we put together these fun packs for friends at school. We are in a dog phase right now, so we picked up a Scooby coloring book (I think they were $1), some Crayola crayons, and some graham cracker Scooby Snacks. Each friend had their name on the coloring book on a dog bone

What fun birthday themes have you loved lately?

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Looking for other things to do with your friends than just dinner and drinks? I always am. While dinner and drinks or coffee are always welcome, I like to look for fun experiences. I have known about Weesh Bake Shop for a long time. Elyse’s dad used to be our vet when I was a kid. At my most recent job, before having kids, a lot of friends had her make some amazing cakes! When I saw that she was offering cake decorating classes, I grabbed my best baking friend, and we met in the Seaport for a fun night out.

The event was held at Travelmug Cafe in the Seaport. The cakes are already crumb coated when we arrive and we practiced icing techniques before decorating the actual cake. So fun to see that we all started with the same blank canvas, and everyone’s cake turned out so unique! I kept mine pretty simple. It was a small group of lovely ladies, and we decorated and chatted while sipping some complimentary wine.

We even got to bring home a complimentary signature Weesh tart! Elyse offers private classes at the Roslindale location of her bakery. Check out all of her offerings here.

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As I was just talking about my sprinkle collection, I thought I would post a few pictures of cupcakes that I have done lately. I made these cute Pokemon cupcakes for a birthday party. Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream, topped with pokeballs from Amazon.

Here is what they look like without the Pokeballs.

These are some of my favorite sprinkles, the blue sanding sugar with the gold stars!

So this was technically not a cupcake, it was a cake, but I loved the contrast of the chocolate cake with the vanilla frosting swirls and the bright colored sprinkles.

Here are the cupcakes to go with the cake. I don’t usually do chocolate cupcakes, you have to be one of a select few to get me to make them!

Lastly, these are pretty simple and fun, but love the color combination of these.

What is your favorite sprinkle color combination?

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In our house we have a tradition where we get the kids a “fancy” store bought cake and then I make them a homemade “mom” cake. It helps make the birthday celebration last a little longer! I have to admit, with all the things that I bake, cakes are not my jam. I can never get the frosting smooth and I’m not a great decorator (even if the frosting tastes delicious). But it is the thought that counts, right? So here is the final result. I printed and cut out a number 5 and traced it out on the cake with a knife and then piped on flowers inside in shades of blues and greens.

What are your birthday traditions?

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We had a moment when we went through a very serious shark phase. We took out every single book from the library about sharks, I could tell you every shark’s name and some fun cocktail party fact about them. This came right after our dinosaur phase. My friends made us this incredible cake for the big day.

I think that he loved the Swedish fish the best.

I picked up these pinatas from Target and attached them to the wall for a fun shark themed photo backdrop.

The shark balloon was from Party City and the blue stars were from the Dollar Store. The Dollar Store is the best deal in town if you are looking for balloons. The number balloons are in the $5 neighborhood, but simple ones, like these stars are so affordable!

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What do you do when you can’t decide what you want your birthday theme to be, unicorns or mermaids? You have them both of course. They go together right? Well, when you’re friend is a super talented cake designed, she sure makes them look like they belong together! My little was beyond over the moon for this birthday cake.

So when it came down to the mom made cake, I didn’t even want to try to ‘compete’. We did strawberry frosted donuts with candles, which was equally as special, and she thought it was even better than cake!

Here is a little sneak peek into the goody bags. We picked up some fun goodies from Target and the Dollar Store. A fun bubble wand, some flower shaped sunnies, bubbles, glow bracelets, a beach ball, and unicorn scratch paper, all loaded into a fun sand bucket shaped like a sand castle.

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We love Valentine’s Day. Our favorite holiday after Halloween. Growing up, I loved making Valentines for friends at school and looking at all the ones my friends made for me. When I had kids of my own, I renewed my love for Valentines – but last year, our school stopped allowing them to be exchanged at school. We still manage to have a lot of fun at home, and find ways to celebrate with friends. I found these cute Valentine doughnuts at Rocco’s for the kids as a fun surprise treat.

We do fun manicures at home with hearts on our nails!

We made these fun crafts for teachers last year. Pick up some paper mache heart ornaments from your local craft store and paint on a thin layer of mod podge. Add tissue paper squares and cover with another layer of mod podge for a shiny clear coat. This was for our visual arts teacher, so we hot glued some letter beads onto it spelling out “in my art era”. Cute as a Valentine, can double as a Christmas ornament.

We found these super cute conversation heart beads on Amazon and used them to make our own headbands. We bought plain headbands on Amazon, although you could certainly use ones you had laying around the house.

Add a little hot glue onto the headband to secure the beads.

How cute are these?

Another fun gift idea would be these Valentine Stanley cup tags. They’re so cute for teens and tweens. You can have them personalized with a name too! They’re available for 30oz. and 40oz. tumblers. Made by SHRH designs.

I saw Amber make these Valentine boxes and thought they were so adorable. After watching, we made our own version – check them out on my Instagram below.

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Our signature snack for Valentines are chocolate covered pretzels. We make them in all colors and with all different kinds of sprinkles, how cute are these ones with the word ‘love’?

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Desserts are my favorite – I think you should eat them first. We bake desserts for friends for all the holidays, it’s our love language. I usually don’t make sandwich cookies of any kind, because I just can’t handle the extra step, but we had some fancy jam, and, these seemed like a fun idea for Leah.

My neighbor from growing up is the best baker. She makes these iced sugar cookies that I adore. She’s even given me the recipe, but I can’t make them taste as delicious as she makes them. So I patiently wait until Valentine’s Day, or my birthday, and I don’t even share them with my kids, that’s how much I adore them.

Cupcakes are our go to dessert to make in our house, the design options are pretty endless. We made these piped hearts with sugar crystals and plain vanilla frosted topped with jelly hearts.

When you want something besides a food options, I give those too. I made this up for my little. A heart belt bag from Target, sparkle boots from Target, Ooly scented stamp able markets, ooly chroma blend watercolors, Construction Site: You’re Just Right, an ice cream truck notebook, some fun bracelets, and some heart glasses that you add glow sticks to.

Another popular dessert that we make on Valentine’s Day are m&m cookies.

If you are looking for a fun and festive dessert, but are short on time, don’t be afraid to take a short cut. We bought mini ice cream sandwiches and rolled them in different sprinkles. They look like a million dollars, that you spent so much time on them, when really, it was under five minutes in the kitchen (most of which was spent unwrapping the paper).

I love all the containers from Bullseye’s Playground. I picked these up last year and filled them with all kinds of fun and colorful Valentine candy.

Another close up of the cupcakes, this batch in chocolate.

Last year Blackbird Doughnuts offered these cute chocolate chip cookies shaped like doughnuts.The kids adored these. Hope they bring them back for this year.

Another container from Bullseye’s Playground – we filled this one with our sprinkle cookies.

This glass Tupperware was from Target as well, but not the dollar section. Although I did pick up at the end of the season, so they were deeply discounted. One of my other shortcuts (shhh don’t tell anyone) is to get store bought brownies if I am short on time, and top with a delicious salted caramel sauce. It makes them seem very fancy. If you have a few extra minutes, but not a ton of time, you can fancy up some box mix by swirling in some sauce or peanut butter!

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This was an especially long holiday break – what felt like 30,303.948.505,404,980 days long. We didn’t go away and only had a few day things planned. Keep it simple. That’s what I kept telling myself. So on the one hand, vacation went by very quickly, but on the other hand, the days dragged on.

In the theme of keeping it simple, I wanted to show you our awesome console table, that we actually go a while ago, but just dressed up for the holidays. It’s from a company called Vinna Home and Kitchen and they have these amazing modern console tables. They can make your table in any number of stain colors and any variety of sizes. Home delivery was white glove and we couldn’t have been more satisfied with the customer service. We bought two to run the length of our couch.

With all the baking that I did this year for friends and teachers etc. I didn’t make cookies for Santa – we outsourced. Thanks Cookie Monstah for the assist! We left Santa with options!

Their Burlington location is a breeze to get to, and they have a great selection. I loved that they asked me when I was ordering if I wanted to put the peanut butter cookies in a separate box (even though I didn’t have allergies, I’m not sure I would have even thought of it if I were getting these as gifts – which I did get one box for friends as long as I was here!) And how cute is the artwork on the box by Elissa Surabian?!?! She is a local chalkboard artist, you may have seen her work around town!

Speaking of friends, for my best gal pals and neighbors, I picked up some of our favorite cookies. It’s a tradition that I get them gingerbread girls or boys from The Gingerbread Construction Co. and for a little glam I picked up these cute holiday gift sets by Essie.

In an effort to make alllll of the Christmas magic happen in such a short amount of time – here is a look at everyone’s “stockings”. We tried to do fewer presents this year, and more “experiences”. For example, we paired each big with a little and they got to go into the city to do a fun gingerbread house decorating event. One pair went to the Langham Hotel and one pair went to Eastern Standard Kitchen. Stay tuned to see how much fun we had there in another post.

Back to our “stockings”. We use Sea Bags bucket bags instead of a traditional stocking. I think it started from our apartment days when we didn’t actually have a mantel, but can’t actually remember. I feel like every year the ante is “upped” and just because it fits in a stocking doesn’t mean it should go in a stocking I mean, when I was a kid, it was like candy and toothbrushes, and now I look, and I am totally guilty of this, I’m putting in $30 Owala water bottles (insert eye roll). I mean, but at least they don’t leak in the kid’s backpacks, right?

So for the big we got an Owala, a fun Stanley key chain/ornament whatever, a gold bubble necklace from Anthropologie, books for her Yoto Box, a cute Caboodles kit because it reminded me of my childhood, and a Squishmallow mystery bag.

For the youngest we picked up a Bluey brush, a Squishmallow surprise mystery bag, some holiday nail stickers, a Yoto story, some fun glow in the dark bandaids from Welly, Squishmallow hair claws, a monogram necklace and some fun ooly metallic pens.

For our oldest, we picked out various boxes of sports cards, a bunch of new Yoto stories, some Burt’s Bees lip balm, and an autographed version of the new book, The Bletchley Riddle, by Ruta Sepetys.

Dad was pretty straightforward, a few bags of his favorite coffee beans, a new razor, and some hair putty. Things are almost as fun when you are a dad as when you are a mom…..almost.

And finally, for the other little, we picked up an Owala with a boot, a new Pokemon book and a little sweet treat. Not pictured were a few Beyblades that came in last minute!

Remember when this blog was about food?! Right, me too. Stopped in to Lola’s pre-Christmas week to get one of their amazing chocolate chip ricotta pies. Not going to lie, I also picked up some frozen meals to give as gifts. We all have that one “uncle” who can’t cook and gets take out every night of the week (oh, wait, that’s just us?) and we figured a weeks worth of home (just not my home) cooked meals would be a great way to start his new year off right! I picked up a few for us to throw in the freezer as well, because let’s be honest, after a huge ramp up and all the Christmas magic we moms are making, once Christmas is over, come December 26th, I know that at least I don’t want to do ANY cooking!

Since we were home all vacation, we picked up quite a few friend’s mail. One of those perks was that they brought us home treats from their travels – and these beauties were some of the favorites from Standard Baking Company in Portland, ME.

Since I was baking so many cookies this year, I thought that maybe some people would be feeling like they were getting too many cookies this season (I mean, personally I NEVER feel that way….but maybe some people do). I figured I would try making cookie dough for friends. This way, they could make cookies when it was convenient for them. They could pull them out of the freezer and make one or make them all. So I found this great easy recipe by Melissa, from Design, Eat, Repeat and made her Freezer Cookie Dough. Super big hit. Some friends made them right away, some waited to make fresh cookies on Christmas, and some saved for later! I have made so many batches since, and keep them in my freezer – I grab when the kids are running out the door to play dates and I have nothing to bring – and it has saved the day in many instances! Here is the best part, you melt the butter, so no mixer required! Customize for the holidays using holiday m&m’s or even try and use that left over holiday candy as mix ins!

By the time I got around to making these cupcakes I don’t want to even tell you how many sticks of butter I had gone through already… but had to change things up from making so many cookies! I pick up sprinkles from every place I go – I even got these cute sugar snowflakes from Market Basket!

I love homemade gifts. I love seeing what people choose to give, or what their strong suits are. I love the thought and care that goes into something home made.Peppermint chocolate was a popular choice this year, which is totally up my alley. 10/10.

Our other neighbor brought us these adorable candy cane cookies and hot cocoa cookies, complete with full sized marshmallows. I applaud anything that you have to make two colors of dough for…I’m a strictly one bowl or it’s too much work kind of gal!

One friend brought us TWO boxes of cookies, maybe because we have so many people in our family Don’t see me complaining though! The chocolate s’mores cookies were #1 with the kids. I think the exact quote was, “the marshmallows are perfectly cooked” and “we should invite them over for s’mores one time”.I mean, that was perfect because that distracted them from the other cookies haha. Anything with jelly is A+ in my book, but also, cut out cookies impress me, because, again, that extra step goes a long way! Extra points for the fancy divider in the box, way above and beyond.

Teacher gifts were basically Girl Scout cookies this year, but to the extra special ones, we gave a little something more, and I’m not talking about the corny puns. But we couldn’t just give a gift card, so these cute treasure boxes we had from Bullseye’s Playground at Target filled with Lindt chocolate, a gift card and a tag saying, “you’re a treasure” were just enough to brighten a few days! Top off with a classic ribbon and a little sparkle.

I do also love a good Chex Mix, and this year was no different. Made a large batch, although had to do it solo this year, Isabelle was not around to do the bag shaking! Silly easy to make and a crowd favorite. Put in a cute tin or tie up with a pretty bow in a cellophane bag and you have a great little holiday treat.

Speaking of gift giving, one of my go to gifts I love to give people with kids is a gingerbread cookie making kit. Wilson Farms sells these plain cookies on packs of 2, and icing in fun colors. I pick up bright colored candy and add to a fun basket, throw in some tissue or paper shred and VIOLA! Simple and fun holiday gift for the whole family that will get them a whole 5 minutes of peace. OK, maybe 3. And yes, that is the viral CVS nutcracker in the background that I got 40% off with a coupon

No holiday would be complete without a stop to Clear Flour Bread. I used to live in Brookline and have really good memories of all the delicious things they had during the holidays (and all the delicious smells). So we lucked out one day, when the weather was not too cold and the line was not too long, and picked up these delicious treats. Not shown are the four loaves of bread we also bought

And to end this post, a look at what we did for our holiday cookie box. We went very kid friendly this year. Although my son’s friend told me that he was very upset that I did not put the Pillsbury slice and bake Christmas tree cookies in the box. Way to keep me humble my friend, and on my toes. I’ll keep that in mind for next year! So getting back to this year.

Chocolate M&M Cookies by Cooking with Karli

Sparkling Shortbread Cookies by E2 Bakes Brooklyn

Holiday colored Rice Krispie Treats

Sugar Cookies drizzled with chocolate and dressed up with holiday sprinkles

The post Christmas 2024: Full Hearts, Even Fuller Stomachs appeared first on A Little Bit About a Lot of Things.

How to gain ten pounds in a month Give me all things peppermint! Trader Joe’s makes their Hold the Cone in a limited holiday peppermint flavor, Crescent Ridge offers their peppermint stick Holiday Cridgewich ice cream sandwiches, New City Micro Creamery offers holiday peppermint stick ice cream pies and Trombetta’s also offers a peppermint stick ice cream pie!

Hot chocolate bombs, love them or hate them? Personally, don’t love them, but the kids adore them. One of these days I think I will try my hand at make our own, they look easy enough to make…

Right now we are in to the cutest beaded necklaces. Found these on Etsy, how fun are those glitter Mickey beads?

I love a good dessert board. Are they even a thing anymore? Samplers will always be a thing in my book! This fun holiday themed dessert board is perfect for a hot cocoa themed night in. Some marshmallows, some dippers, mug toppers, and crunchy cookies to put your cocoa over the top.

I also love a good shelfie. Here are some of our favorite holiday reads:

Twas the Night Before Christmas, Illustrated by Mr. Boddington

5 More Sleeps ‘Til Christmas By Jimmy Fallon a fun rhyming book counting down the sleeps until Santa’s arrival.

Together by Heather Stricker A story of a boy who visits Santa, and tells him that instead of presents, he wants to spend time with his family, and enjoy their family traditions.

Christmas baking is in full swing – cupcakes are top on the list. Let’s get out all the different sprinkles and have at it!

One of my kid’s favorite things of the season is my childhood neighbor makes these reindeer brownies and delivers them to us every year. They gobble them up!

And no baking season would be complete without sprinle cookies. Made with massive amounts of butter and cream cheese, these are melt in your mouth delicious with just a hint of almond flavor. They have the right amount of crunch on the outside and yet remind me of a childhood bakery. What are some of your fondest holiday baking memories?

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