Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! I hope that you all enjoyed spending time with friends and family as well as eating delicious food!

Due to a lack of financial resources to travel as well as the need to stay and work on homework, this year Mr. Strange and I decided to stay in Provo by ourselves. This was an extremely hard decision to make, but it was worth it.

In our 2 1/2 years of marriage, Mr. Strange and I have never celebrated a large holiday like this one by ourselves. We both worked up until Wednesday, this made Thanksgiving day extra special because it was our 1st day off for the week. This was also the day that we did not allow ourselves to do or think about homework - that was the BEST part of the entire day.

Since it was just us, we didn't want to kill ourselves by making the 'perfect' spread. So we ended up making a turkey (Thanks Grandma L.!), Stove Top Stuffing (who doesn't just love this?), mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry, and store bought pumpkin pie with whipped cream. In my opinion, our dinner was perfect, especially because I shared it with my best friend and lover!

Originally when we decided to stay in Provo, we were going to invite others over. However, due to our stellar Christmas party that is coming up, I decided that I wanted a "hassle free" Thanksgiving. However, if we would have hosted a Thanksgiving dinner, I would have made these:

Oreo Turkeys

*courtesy of Our Best Bites

AND

Turkey Flower Place Cards

*courtesy of Our Best Bites

I just can't handle those, I think they are both so cute and SO do-able. They could even be a great family craft the day of! When I was a little girl, I would always make place cards for our family dinners (even though we always knew where everyone would sit) along with our extended family holiday dinners. I would have loved these crafts!

I think that I will have to make these next year!

Christmas Party Invitations

I know I've been slightly obsessed with invitations in general lately, however, today I'd like to focus on holiday invitations in particular.

Recently I purchased my invitations for my Christmas Party on etsy.com. You all know how much I love that site. My favorite part about invitations on etsy is that you can purchase a "printable" version, which means that you print the invitation yourself. This is such an easy option!

In my searching for the perfect holiday party invitation, I found the graphic designer, Sarah Evans, whose business name is "chachkedesigns" and was originally going to purchase this invitation:

As soon as I saw this, I knew that this was invitation that I wanted. However, one tragic day, I went to click on the purchase button and it didn't work. In search of a different invitation, I went straight away to Sarah's main product page. That was when I found the perfect invitation for what all that I wanted included in the invitation. (Note that after not being able to purchase my first-choice invitation, I emailed Sarah who responded quickly and was SO helpful...but by then I had already fallen in love with a new invite) The original invitation on etsy was blue, but Sarah easily changed the color scheme to red.

Here is the final invitation:

How can you not just LOVE that invitation. It makes me excited for my own party!

Some of my other favorite invitations are below.

*Courtesy of LunaPetuniaDesigns

*Courtesy of BeesKneesCreative

*Courtesy of BeesKneesCreative

Our Best Bites

Today's post will be entirely posted to one of my most favorite websites, Our Best Bites. I found this website when one of my sister's neighbors dropped this Pie-in-a-Jar on her doorstep. They have crafts and recipes. I love their variety of recipes, from entree's to house-warming food tokens to holiday goodies, these ladies are pros and have got you covered.

One of their recipes that I'd like to discuss today is their 'Apple Cider Floats'. I'm a sucker for GOOD apple cider. You know that thick stuff with lots of pulp? Yep, that's what I love. Anyways, this recipe calls for the following:

Apple Cider Floats

-apple cider

-vanilla bean ice cream

-nutmeg

-cinnamon

-ginger ale

-caramel

*Follow their step-by-step recipe here

Doesn't this look delicious? I think I could drink one of these in every season, it's all a matter of stocking up on the good apple cider while it's in season.

Halloween Traditions

While my husband and I have not been very festive this Halloween (we spent our Halloween night in the library studying), I have fond memories of Halloween as a child. My brother and I used to use pillowcases to go trick-or-treating. I think my mom instituted this practice after she realized that we were getting more candy than the little jack-o-lantern buckets hold. After trick-or-treating, my brother and I would come home and lay out all of the candy we had gotten and trade for "the good stuff". Ah, those were the good days.

Now that I no longer go trick-or-treating, I have found new ways to enjoy the holiday. Namely, decorating and baking. Originally this post was going to be dedicated to Halloween "finger foods", but YUCK! looking at the creepy creations people make just gives me the willies. Growing up, my mom was not into the creepiness of Halloween. We never had extreme decorations, nor were us kids ever allowed to dress up as anything terribly frightening. Therefore, my decor preferences for this holiday are geared toward more mild holiday celebrations. Below are some of the party decor ideas that I love.

*I like the "poison" bottle labels in this one, along with the wreath.

*Some people are so creative -- hull out and use a pumpkin as a cooler?

I think so.

*This just makes me salivate.

*I love the candle oranges idea here. You can purchase candy in bulk (as seen above) online.

I love how cute these ideas are without being creepy. Don't even start me on possible Halloween invitations, just head straight to etsy.com and search "halloween party invitations".