Cranberry Mulled Cider

Video Recipe

A great video on how to make the perfect holiday comfort drink.

cranberry mulled cider from tiger in a jar on Vimeo.

 A second written recipe from Martha Stewert Weddings

Cyber Monday Gift Guide

This weekend is the busiest shopping weekend of the year. 

We have flown by Black Friday as well as Small Business Saturday.

Tomorrow will be Cyber Monday! 

The perfect way to hit two of these days is to combine small business with cyber shopping. 

I've set up a lovely gift guide, with something for everyone.

Just remember, these are special prices and after Monday, may be gone for good!

For Your Special Lady

Why buy a boring mass produced necklace when you can buy the woman you love a one of a kind treasure?

Originally $74, this necklace will be on sale for $59.20.

FiveLittleGems entire shop is 20% off, plus free domestic shipping. 

 

For the Book Nerd

Your teenage daughter always has a book in her hands. 

You'd buy her another one, but there's a good chance she already owns it.  Pick up a set of Dewey Decimal earrings so she can show off her hobby to whose wise enough to understand. 

This set of earrings from SovereignSea is originally $17. 

If you use the code SUPPORTSMALLBIZ while checking out, you get 15% off!

For the Hostess

She throws dinner parties you always attend, but you're never quite sure what to bring for her holiday gift.

Try a mosaic pillar candle holder. After all, she loves a nice smelling house.

This one is originally $40, and on sale for $34. It even can double as a vase!

Three Sisters Candles offers gorgeous candle holders, as well as candles to fit them.

The City Lover

Perfect for a male or a female. 

That person who has always felt a special connection with the packed streets and city lights.

Nancy Falso Photography offers fantastic NYC prints such as this one.

Originally $25, it's on sale for $17.50.

For The Organized

Key holder? Check. Mail sorter? Check.
Scarves on the knobs. Gloves in the top? Oh so many uses. 

Legal Miss Sunshine makes these great organizers. This one is originally $52 and on sale for $41.60!

For The Hunter

Originally $32, this bullet necklace is available for $24.

The chain is perfect length for male or female.

Black Star has many more bullet pieces in her shop as well!

For The Gardener

Cubits shop is full of organic seeds. 

You can normally pick up 3 packs for $10, but right now you can get 20% off plus a free basil pack!

Use code BLACKFRIDAY20 when checking out.

For Your Lil Girl 

 Your precious daughter, niece, or granddaughter carries her American Girl doll with her everywhere.
Keep that lil doll bundled up tight in this winter outfit.
Dress Ur Dolly is doing free shipping and has some of the most original outfits I've seen! 

Of course, i'm doing one in my own shop as well! 10% off plus free shipping.

Thanksgiving Leftovers.

Thanksgiving is officially over.

Who has a fridge full of leftovers? Hmm?

What are you planning on doing with them? 

Image from Dallas Observer. I warn you, the article this comes from is fairly "f-bomb" heavy.

How amazing does that look? 

Start with two slices of fantastic wheat bread, extra points if it's handmade! 

Add a big ol layer of cranberry sauce. 

While it's best home made, I'll try not to hold it against you if you make it from a can! 

Layer on the turkey slices, followed by a helping of stuffing. This year, at our house, we skipped the traditional stuff packed with celery pieces and instead had turkey bacon in ours. 

Yes, pieces of turkey bacon. Mmmmm.

Top it with a light layer of mayo... if you want to add that, I may skip that layer. 

Toss on the top piece of bread, slice in half, and DIG IN.

Perfect leftover sandwich.

Button Ornaments

Tis the season! 

Wait... it isn't even Thanksgiving yet! Hmm... Oh well.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that they know I'm not too big on Christmas. For one, I'm not a fan of the colors red and green being combined in just about anything. 

I prefer "winter" decorations over "christmas" ones I guess you could say. 

Those icey blues and silvers are where it's at for me! Give me the beauty of snow and ice please. 

I also like decorations that are slightly out of the ordinary. 

Buttons? They're good for more than just keeping your clothes together. I came across three different ornaments that you can customize any way you want to for the perfect holiday look. They'd be cheap and easy to make for a color themed tree especially! 

The buttons used aren't really expensive. If you go into the craft store and  look hard enough (in Hobby Lobby they're near the scrap booking and embellishments) 

you'll be able to find pretty big bags of buttons for $6.

At Wendys Hat, she purchased clear bulbs that you can take the top cap off and fill with anything you'd like, as long as it's small enough to fit into that hole. 
The hat lady went with a classic white color that would fit in any setting. 
I do think these would look best when filled with 3 colors or less.
I love the classic look of this one.  Tie a ribbon to the top or add a metal hanger for your tree. 
This particular one has a tassle hanging down to spice it up a bit. 

I saw this piece on Curbly.

Styrofoam ball of any size.

Straight pins. (the kind you find in the sewing department)

Buttons!

Going multi color here sounds like a great idea. 

The contrasting colors on the overlapping pieces is perfect! 

To top this off, try taking a small piece of wire (jewelry wire, floral wire, anything) and making an upside down "U" shape with it. Stick the ends into the ball and add a dot of glue to keep them in place. Tie a ribbon bow onto your "U" to hide the wire, and add a hanger from there.

There are 4 other button ornament ideas on that website as well!

Modern Minerals came up with this little tree, after seeing the Martha Stewart mini button wreath ornament.  The big bag of buttons you can pick up has varying sizes included. Pick a color scheme, and start stacking! The author at MM used a plain piece of cord to string through the holes.  You do need to make sure what you're using is small enough to fit, and sturdy enough to hold it. Don't use thick leather or thin thread. I would suggest a piece of hemp perhaps.  You can glue or paint the tip so it stays stiff and moves through the holes easier. If you don't have any cord, hemp, or thin yarn... try a piece of medium thickness wire. 

A tiny star bead (or any bead) makes the perfect tree topper.

Wichita Mountains

We made one last trip to the mountains this year before it started getting a little cold. 

It was the weekend after they got the fire out. There was a huge fire in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma. When I say huge, I mean, I think it burned over 40,000 acres. That's quite a bit of land. 

After doing a short search I came across this photo, which I did not take.

Credit for this goes to this photosteam. 

Looks like it's the view of a piece of the area from Fort Sill.

Here are a few photos that I did take.

The first few show what most of the ground looked like as we were driving. It's insane how a fire can hit one side of the road, and not the other... or go in a complete circle, but miss a 5x5 patch in the middle. 

This past summer has been fairly bad with fires in the southwest.

Usually we spot lots of buffalo. This trip, we only saw a few.  The rest must have been in hiding!

But, there were plenty of longhorns. 

And you can't forget the prairie dogs!!

I leave you with a photo of me.

Lets ignore the fact that one of my shirts was pulled down oddly too much in the back. hah.

Pinterest Pinday Mini Cakes

Todays Pinday post is centered around mini cakes. 

These things are really neat looking. 

I've purchased the cakes that are baked into glass canning jars before, but these take it a step further.
Mashing up your cake with your frosting?
Baking them in your leftover green beans can from last nights dinner?
Yeah, this takes the cake! (pun intended. baha)

Counter clockwise from top left:

• How to make a single serving mini cake. If you cut the top and bottom off a can and cover the bottom with tin foil, you can fill it up halfway with cake batter and bake it! Once it's completely cooled, flip it over and shake it out of the can to decorate.
  
• You can either decorate your cake easy with some icing on top, or get fancy with it! This person has already decorated this one with a monogram of my initial. Maybe it was meant just for me? haha!

• Bright green and swirl decorated cake pops! Bake a cake, and then crumble the entire thing into a bowl. Take your icing and mix it into the cake crumbles. Yes, you have to use your hands and yes, you will get messy!
  
• Once you have your mix, form into balls and put a stick in each one (if you want them on sticks. you could just keep them as balls and set them in mini cupcake wrappers). Melt some chocolate in the microwave or a double burner and dip the balls into it, placing them on parchment paper to cool in the fridge. The second lovely decorated bunch came from here.