Happy Friday!

Auld Lang Syne

Hooray! Tomorrow is New Year's Eve!

It's supposed to be very chilly here in Denver (high of 19, low of-2), but since this is a pretty date-specific celebration, the show must go on.

In case you too are headed to a party, I've pulled together some of options for easy appetizers. If there is no recipe link, then the recipe is basically just the ingredients I've listed in title.


Easy Greek Dip with homemade pita chips


Bruschetta with fresh tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper


Spiced Ginger Cashews


Phyllo with pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, and Parmesan


Greek-Style Potato Skins


Puff pastry with fresh whipped cream and strawberries


Blackberry Cobbler in a Jar

This year, I'm planning on making homemade Snickers and a ginger simple syrup you can add to a glass of champagne.

Cheers to a wonderful 2011!

A long December

This is my second post of the month (the first post was 28 days ago). Clearly I've been doing other things...with all the holiday fun/travel/stomach bug/parties/etc. I've let the blog slip. But no longer!

Even though it's four days past Christmas, here's few shots of our house decorated for the season.

Hope you had a wonderful holiday!

DIY Designing: Cork Board

This is the perfect time of year for this DIY project. Why? Because (hopefully) you're celebrating often and drinking lots of wine!

I've been collecting corks for quite some time now to make this cute board. Mama was even sending me some out to Colorado so I could wrap this project up. Originally I had planned to make this to hang in the kitchen. But then I moved to Colorado and into a house with very few interior walls on the first floor. So now it's going in my office. Yay!

1. Gather corks.

Lots and lots of cork.


2. You'll also need a frame of sorts. I used a frame that no longer had any glass in it. Want to know why there's no glass? Because I was drinking a glass of wine on my birthday and accidentally knocked the glass off the table. Seem like a loss? At least I got a cork out of it!


3. Take the time to lay out your pattern. More than likely you'll have several corks of the same brand, and you surely don't want a cork board with two brands side by side.


4. Now we come to the incredibly not fun part: gluing more than 100 corks one by one onto the board with hot glue. Don't try to glue more than one cork at once. Evil things happen.


5. Keep gluing until you are done. Which will take a while.


6. Then hang on the wall.


And months of collecting and hours of gluing later, you've got a darling cork board.

P.S. Coming soon! The reveal of my new home office. Just need to sew the curtains, and we're good to go!