A Gift Guide for Mom

Hello! I worked with my mom on this gift guide and it was so much fun to do with her! We also came up with a short experiences gifting list if your mom doesn’t want “things” rather than “time” with you!

1. A Cooking Class {so fun, here in Boston you can do a Macaron Making Class!}

2. Mani/Pedi date {a classic and you can never go wrong with this}

3. A wine tasting day at a local winery {what better way to spend a day?!}

4. A broadway show! {Check and see what is playing near you and grab a couple tickets to the show! We love seeing shows, The Lion King and Aladdin are so good.}

5. Arrange for a cleaning service to come clean the house {this one isn’t so much a gift to spend time with you but you could do this in combination with a mani/pedi date so your mom can spend time with you AND come home to a spotless house!}

Here are the things that are either on my moms Christmas list or things that she already has and loves! Things that I know your moms will love as well! I even have a couple of these things and/or are on my own list! *cough cough* Drunk Elephant baby facial, I have wanted it for about a year now and just have never pulled the trigger. My mom loves their face oil as well {so do I}.

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A {Gluten Free} Friendsgiving Brunch

Here it goes!

I put it up to vote last week of weather you guys would like to see a Traditional Thanksgiving, Brunch, or a Fiesta and Brunch won by a landslide! Today I am sharing the details from our Friendsgiving brunch and I can’t wait for you to see how it turned out! Most of the things we made I found a recipe for on Pinterest and I will link you to it so you can get all the details from the original maker. I will also share if I tweaked or added anything to the recipe. But there are a couple of things that I created like the Orange Cranberry Mimosas!

Hash brown Breakfast Casserole - This recipe came from Kelsey from The Blue Cheese Bungalow {how cute is that name?!}. We loved this casserole, it was so yummy! Cheesy and delicious.

Maple Brown Sugar Bacon - I used Alea’s recipe from Premeditated Leftovers. I saw the picture of this recipe on Pinterest and I was sold. Then we made it and OH MY GOODNESS, it was GOOD. I had never had sweet bacon at all and I can’t believe that I waited this long to have it.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Waffles - This was a super yummy recipe from Audrey at Mama Knows Gluten Free. Very good, I put syrup on them but they were so yummy that I could have eaten them just by themselves.

Yogurt Bar - This is pretty self explanatory and I just put out yogurt with gluten free granola, brown sugar, chocolate chips and thinly sliced apples! Easy and delish!

Orange Cranberry Mimosas - See the ingredients and instructions below!

For the decor, I wanted to keep it simple because we made all of the food as well, I went with an easy burlap table runner and some small white pumpkins! I will link all of the details below. I had so much fun putting this together and it really felt like the perfect combination of easy and delicious! As always I would love to know if you end up trying anything from this post, it would make my day!

4 Wine and Cheese Pairings

I feel like this has just been the week of hosting blog posts, but who am I kidding- I love it! I wanted to share some wine and cheese pairings that you can put out at your next get together. I love taking the guessing out of what you are serving and you can just enjoy the company! These are my four go-to’s when I am having people over. I know that I post really large charcuterie boards but you can put out something as simple as cheese and cracker, it doesn’t need to be extravagant. I will give you some examples below!

Pino Noir and Brie

This is always my first thought, especially in the fall and winter. I love pairing a creamy, buttery brie with a pino noir. You can always leave it as just brie and wine or you can elevate the cheese and add a jam! My perfect combination is brie with rhubarb jam and Simple Mills almond flour crackers! Its both salty and sweet!

Pino Grigio and Gouda

Gouda is a bit heavier but the Pino Grigio complements the cheese with its lighter taste of the Pino Grigio! If you are wanting to add a bit to the cheese you can pair it with dried apricots and table crackers! If you are gluten free I like the Schar Gluten Free Table Crackers. This is such an easy combination to put together because you can just set out the gouda, apricots and crackers on the cheese plate and your guests can decide how they would like to eat it!

Riesling and Goat Cheese

This is one of the yummiest combinations! I love goat cheese… I mean LOVE it! We had a great combo at on our Halloween Grazing Table that was the goat cheese log rolled in fig jam and crushed pistachios! Another option would be the goat cheese log rolled in honey and then rolled in a mixture of finely chopped apricots and almonds! The sweet Riesling will complement the dense texture of the cheese!

Merlot and Aged Cheddar

This combination is SO yummy in the winter and so easy because it doesn’t need to be really paired with anything. I like crackers paired with the cheddar! You really don’t need much more, the cheddar goes nicely on table crackers as well! Or if you like the saltiness, you can use Simple Mills Crackers instead!

Here are my favorites for entertaining a small crowd!

As always, I am here for questions! I would be THRILLED to help you figure out what you will be serving for your next get together. No matter how large or small, just ask!

Gift Guide for the Hostess

Here we go with this years gift guides! I wanted to start off with gifts for the hostess! I don’t think its a secret that I love hosting, in fact without really realizing until right now when I started writing… that each of the blog posts for this week has to do with hosting! Gift Guide for the hostess, 5 Tips for Getting your Guest Bedroom Ready and lastly, Wine and Cheese Pairings! A fun week in my opinion but I might be biased lol So here we go…

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Three Themes for Your Friendsgiving

I am SO JAZZED for this post! We are hosting a Friendsgiving this year and I couldn’t be more excited! If you know me, you know that both Dustin and I love to host, have people stay with us while they are in town, friends over for dinners. We just love it! If you are new around here, you can see the details from our latest get together here. We decided to have a Friendsgiving and I couldn’t narrow down what theme I wanted to do for the get together. I was talking to my mom and she suggested letting you guys vote! If you head to my feed I am going to give away a Starbucks gift card to one of you that votes!

The three themes that I came up with were a Traditional Friendsgiving Dinner, A Friendsgiving Brunch, or a Mexican Fiesta! I put together an inspiration board for all three themes just to give you guys an idea of what I was thinking. Our Friendsgiving is next weekend and I will be writing all about the details once it has happened! Here are the inspiration collages. I put the links to all of the original recipes below each of the photos, so if anything looks delish {which it all does} go check it out!

Traditional

| Pumpkin Pie | Apple Crisp Bars | Decor | Bourbon Cranberry Cocktail | Turkey | Garlic & Chive Mashed Potatoes | Stuffing | Roasted Brussel Sprouts |

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Brunch

| Cranberry Drink | Breakfast Sangria | Decor | Pumpkin French Toast | Pecan Pie French Toast | Everything Bagel Breakfast Casserole | Sweet Potato Hash | Candied Bacon |

Fiesta

| Cranberry Margaritas | GF Churros | Decor | Pork Carnitas | Skirt Steak Fajitas | Guacamole | Mexican Street Corn Salad | Queso |

Which one would you choose to do?! I like all three of them and seriously can’t decide! I will let you guys know which one was chosen as soon as I know! Stay tuned for the results and to see what I came up with for our Friendsgiving!

7 Things to Keep in Mind When Traveling Internationally

Hi guys!

I wanted to talk about some things that I learned before and while traveling. I learned most of these thing from my parents who have traveled and also my sisters who travel A LOT! I feel like this blog post will be one of those that is always being added to just because I learn something new every time I go somewhere! Here are 7 things to know before you travel!

1. Learn cultural norms - You will want to learn things that could potentially be offensive where you are headed that would be totally normal where you live, do some research before getting there!

2. Know the exchange rate before you leave - It would seriously suck to get there any if cost so much more than you expected. Just know what you are getting yourself into! Sometimes its like you get a discount for yourself. For example, when I was in Singapore, it was like a discount when I would shop because of the exchange rate. Just something to pay attention to, make sure its in the budget!

3. Alert your bank - Let your bank know that you will be making purchases in another city or country, you want them to know your travel plans so they don’t freeze your account. There is seriously nothing worse than being somewhere and your account being frozen! This happened to my whole family while we were at Disney World one time because we lived in Iowa and there were charges happening in Florida. Its a great thing that the bank does in case of fraud but a bummer if you don’t plan ahead.

4. Bring your debit card - My sister told me this one and it makes so much sense! Bring your debit card with you to the country you are traveling to and then take out cash. Refrain from pulling out cash and then exchanging money, you will lose less money this way!

5. Learn some of the language - Its important and polite to learn at least the basic words in the primary language that is spoken wherever you are headed! Things like hello, goodbye, thank you… that sort of thing! Its a nice gesture and can help you with certain situations!

6. Make sure you know that even if you plan things will not go as you planned and that’s usually where the fun stuff happen. Yes, it is nice to have a plan or an itinerary to get in all of those things on your “must do” list- it is important to also be okay with changes! While we were in Santorini we didn’t plan on spending any time hiking, but we stumbled upon it and it was one of the coolest afternoons of the trip!

7. Be cautious, but don’t be closed off! Be aware of your surroundings and the people around you, but don’t let that stop you from meeting new people and making friends on your travels! We have met so many great people on our trips and love that! We met a couple while we were in Mexico last summer and spent pretty much the whole time with them! That wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t get out of our comfort zone.

I hope that you guys found these tips helpful for your trips that you have planned! Do you have any tips to share? I feel like when you are traveling you are constantly learning and I love that! Like I said before, I’m 100% sure that I will learn something new about travel on our next trip and the trip after that.

Our Experience at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party

Last year we were able to spend a week at Disney World around Christmas time, literally combine my two favorite things (Disney and Christmas) and I was pretty much in heaven! We went the first week in December and the crowds weren’t bad at all! We were hesitant at first to go to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party as adults with no kids but honestly it was great! With no kids we were able to out wait the crowds and get some VERY cool shots on Main Street USA with me being the only person there!

Tickets

It was the longest day for us, we got to Magic Kingdom at rope drop and we were one of the last 10 people in the parks {HELLO, dream come true!!}. We actually took the next day off from parks just so we could relax a bit, you can read more about the rest of our trip here. It was such a cool experience and even better with little to no crowds! It was definitely worth the money to us, it made such great memories. I believe that we paid $109 per person for the party tickets. This was on top of our tickets for that day but that really just had to do with us not having extra days. I don’t think {as adults} that it was too hard to do the whole park and the event in the same day if you are short on time!

Wristbands

It was nice because all we had to do during the day was go and pick up our wristbands for the party at one of the locations they were handing them out. We picked ours up at the location in Adventureland. Around 5 pm we just asked a cast member where to get the bands and they told us where to go. I believe if you are entering the park a bit before the party, they will just give you your wristband at the front gate. But easy to get either way!

Photos

This was both Dustin and I’s first time so we didn’t want to plan anything out, we just decided to let the night take us where it wanted. We did want to get a lot of cool pictures though- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. With the lack of people, we were able to get shots that we wanted without waiting for a ton of people to get out of the way lol yes they were a bit dark but very easy to brighten up! We stayed in the park until 2:15 getting shots. We really closed down the park and it was a dream come true!

Food & Treats

I will say that the one bummer about the party was my gluten allergy and the lack of snacks. Now don’t get me wrong, they had options - but they were pretty much all the same at each station. Where as for normal treats there were tons of goodies! They had things like Peppermint crunch cookies, Snowman Soft Pretzels. Ginger & Molasses Cookies with eggnog, Snickerdoodle cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. I think in hindsight, I didn’t try hard enough to find to find foods that I could have. Like I am looking at the map now and it says there were things like apple cider, snow cones and hot chocolate. Which at the time I just wrote off but I could have enjoyed those things!

One tip I do have is to eat an actual meal before the event! We ate at dinner at Pinocchio Village Haus before the event and we were so glad we did! One other thing we did was get a spot to watch a few of the shows and then Dustin ran to get us some coffee from Main Street Bakery to drink while we were watching them. It was actually cold that evening and the hot coffee was great! TIP: Bring an extra layer if you are going to be in the parks at night in December. If you would have told me before the trip that we would need one, I would have said you were lying. But I actually bought a long sleeve shirt and wished I had a hat or a blanket!

Entertainment

We decided that because we rode rides all day long we wanted to really enjoy the extras that the party had to offer! We watched A Frozen Holiday Wish, Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade, and Holiday Wishes. All of these shows had multiple showings so we were able to go when it was convenient. We ended up watching the shows in the middle of the evening and doing rides before and after! We had a blast watching these shows and the parade, there were characters I had never seen out before in the parade which was really cool.

Merchandise

They did have event specific merchandise, we ended up getting Mickey’s Santa Hat but other than we didn’t get anything! They had things like special magic bands, trading pins, pass holder merchandise and other things like clothing and toys!

Overall, we would absolutely recommend doing Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, alone as adults or with your kids! Disney always goes above and beyond to make something magical and special and this applies to the party as well! We loved seeing characters, riding the rides and eating treats all while not having to navigate huge crowds! We will absolutely be back to do it again!

Boozy Apple Cider

I feel like it has been so long since I have shared a drink recipe! I would love to share one a month, so from now on I am going to add it to my calendar! So for November the drink is Boozy Apple Cider and let me tell you, it was DELISH! We made it for our guests at our Halloween Party and it was a hit, it was pretty much gone by the time the party was over! And it you read that post, (if not you can read it here), the drink dispensers were actually pretty big! So with that being said, it was so yummy. It is so easy and just four ingredients!

What you will need

Like I said, super easy to throw together and the longer that it was in the drink dispenser, the tastier it got! I would love to hear if you decide to make this cocktail for a party of yours! As always, send any questions that you have my way. I would be more than happy to answer them for you!

6 things to bring to Disney World

I feel like each time we go to the parks we realize one more thing and honestly other things that we thought we needed but never actually use! I wanted to create a list of our must-haves that we use when we visit the parks.

1. GOOD SHOES, I cannot stress this enough! DO NOT walk into Disney World with Old Navy flip flops.. you will be so sad! Imagine walking 7-9 miles a day or more in bad shoes!! I wrote a whole post on the shoes that I have worn in the parks that work great for me! You can read more about those here!

2. Portable phone charger, We have two of these chargers that we use, we’ve just found with how often we use them it is better to have two of them for the both of us. We use chargers for so many things when we are in the parks. We need our phones to use the My Disney Experience App, entertainment in lines, taking photos and texting if we get separated from each other.

3. Sunglasses and/or a hat. It is sunny in Florida regardless of what time of year it is, the lines for the rides aren't always covered by shade so make sure you have something to relieve the heat! We’ve brought one or the other if not both even when visiting in December! I bring these sunglasses and Dustin wears hats in the parks!

4. Plastic baggies! Those water rides won't be cautious of getting your phone wet. Just bring a small ziplock baggy to stick your phone in when you are riding Splash Mountain! Although recently we went on Splash Mountain and they gave us baggies. But we also went on Kali River Rapids and there weren’t bags for us to use. I would bring them just in case!

5. SNACKS, snacks are always important but especially at Disney World. You don't realize how much you are walking and it makes you so hungry! Things that we like to take with us into the parks are things like Larabars, peanuts/cashews, and pb&j’s, gluten free pretzels! We’ve found that gluten free breakfasts are harder to find so unless I eat before entering the parks I usually snack until lunch! I would say bring snacks especially if you have an allergy!

6. Mickey Ears! If its your first time going you might not be all for the Mickey ears, but once you get there you might regret not having them! This happened with me, I didn’t take any ears with me for our wedding and by the end of our trip I was so sad that I didn’t have any, I felt a bit left out! For our trip at Christmas I got a new pair of ears from Etsy! Side note: I saw a meme the other day that said “When you purchase from a small shop, the owner actually does a happy dance”, I love that! I love buying from small shops because you will most likely get something that not many other people have! See some pairs that I have and some that are on my wishlist below! You can read about more of my favorite Disney Etsy shops here!