Winterlicious Glass Bubbles

Volleyball got canceled this morning so I'm catching up on some blogging time.  It rained all day here yesterday so I finished up some projects and caught up on my taped shows.   

Most rooms in my house are getting a little Winterlicious makeover.

The mantel is complete. 
I made the stockings yesterday, but haven't had a chance to take pictures yet.   
To see how I did the mantel go here.

To further bring in some winter sparkle,
I moved my glass bubbles from outside to in and gave them a seasonal sprucing up.

I emptied out the sand, succulents, shells, and tillandsias and hung them on the curly willow branches next to my vertical pallet garden and my metal hanging basket light.  So far the experimental vertical garden is doing awesome and it's growing.  I added some Christmas balls to the light for some Holiday bling.

I filled the glass balls with faux snow, faux greenery, and a Christmas ornament. 

Gold birds, a snowman, and a Christmas tree. This was a free makeover, I used what I had.

The bubbles make me feel like it's winter here in San Diego, 

Sometimes it even looks like it's snowing inside.

Stay warm birdie.

I don't really use too many snowmen in my Christmas decor, but I like him contained in the bubble.

I tend to put things in glass containers and change them out for the season.

Here's one of my giant Winterlicious snow globes. 

To see more of my snow globes go here.

These glass containers sit on my kitchen counter.

More glass on my island. 

We don't get much snow in San Diego so I have to pretend with my vignettes. 

The glass contains the snow so we don't end up with "snow drifts" all over the house.

Still need to work on my picture taking and getting rid of the glare off the glass. 

Hope your Holidays are warm and cozy even though it's snowing at my house.

My Buffet

Here's how I decorated my buffet.
I started by adding a faux greenery garland across the top of the mirror and added a feather boa, silver/gold twigs, a string of glass beads, my embellished starfish, and some mercury balls. I had everything except the silver/gold twigs. I found them for .99 cents a piece at a floral supply and they were an additional 40 percent off.

 

At night.

Here is my buffet from last Christmas.  Since then I have painted over the stencil, flipped the mirror, and added the architectural detail .  I'm still wrestling with what to do with the buffet itself?  Buy a "new" piece on CL or re purpose?  It belonged to my great grandmother but it's to small, I don't like the craftsman style, or the color.  Even if I refinish it the style will remain the same.  So it stays until I figure what to do. 

I purchased this living Norfolk Pine last year at Home Depot for $16.99 and it's still thriving.  I moved it inside for the season.  I added Christmas balls to the base of the urn.  The urn is old. it's from Target when they still had a garden center.

Here is the tree from last year wrapped in burlap.

I flanked the buffet with my two faux columns from Target.  They were a great purchase years ago from the garden center at 70 percent off.  They are light weight and portable.  I move them inside and out depending on the season.  I added urns and faux poinsettias and greenery.  I had all this stuff already and I wonder why we can only fit one car in the garage?

I used a piece of burlap to cover the top of the buffet and added some more silver, gold, and green.

Candles in hurricanes.

I hot glue crystals and buttons on my starfish. 

I'm done with the inside, but I still keep tweaking things. 

I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do.

Hope you and your family are enjoying the Holiday season.

Thanks for checking it out.

Spanish Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes

I found this on Pinterest and made it last night.  One of the nice things about Pinterest is you get to see pictures and links of what your friends have found that you might not ever have been introduced to.  I repinned this from Leslie Simons.  We started following each other's Pins, so thanks Leslie for the introduction to this great recipe.

Spanish Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes.

  Yummy comfort food that the whole family loved.  Another benefit is this one is very easy to make.  You pretty much throw it all together in a casserole dish and put it in the oven.  Very minimal prep, just a little chopping.   Life is Great originally posted this picture, but the recipe is from Nigella Lawson.

Life is Great

Nigella

I'm not sure what country the recipe is from because the measurements were in kg. and the oven heat was in Celsius?  I baked it at 375 degrees convection bake for an hour and broiled it for a couple minutes at the end to crisp up the chicken skin.  I used a pound of baby red potatoes because our grocery store didn't have baby goldens.  Next time I will use linguica sausage instead of chorizo.  The chorizo was delicious, but our brand crumbles apart into small pieces.  If you look at the picture, their chorizo stays in chunks. 

The combination of the orange peel, oregano, and spicy sausage made the whole house smell yummy!

This one's a keeper and I'll definitely make it again.

Tried any new recipes lately?

Thanks for checking it out.

The Race, Owl Napkin Rings, Cookies, and the Gratitude Card Consensus!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.

We started the festivities with a family run in the morning.  Sorry I forgot the camera for the big race.  My husband and my nephew had a one mile challenge race while the rest of us cheered them on and jogged the mile.  My husband was quite happy he can still out run a 13 year old. 

We will be doing this again next year, it was so fun!

We came home famished after our workout and started the feasting. 

Hey, we ran a whole mile, we deserved to indulge!

Here is the kid's table and a quick little dollar store napkin ring project.

I showed you the adult table in the last post.

I made these owl napkin rings for the kid's table.

I found the owl rings and the feather hair clips at the dollar store.

 

I divided these sparkly wired leaves that came clustered on a stem and hot glued the ends of each leaf together to form a circle.  This formed the base of my napkin ring.  You can see one of the base rings in this picture laying on the newspaper.

I removed the finger ring from the backs of the owls and feathers.  I added a little more hot glue and attached both to my leaf circle to complete the napkin ring.

I put the extras that weren't holding napkins around the candlesticks and votives.

I added a few spray painted white and gold pumpkins, some gold twig place mats, and red cranberry red chargers to complete the look.  The red bubble glasses belonged to my Grandmother.  We use them everyday.

As the turkey was cooking, the kids decorated cookies while the rest of the family drank champagne and watched football.

Casey

No time for smiling mom, I'm in the cookie zone.

These girls take their cookie decorating seriously.

My cousin Margaret (on the right hand side of this photo) made all the cookies and the Royal Icing for the decorating.  She uses a Martha Stewart recipe and these cookies are the best looking and tasting sugar cookies I have ever experienced.  She has brought them for the last two years of Thanksgiving and I hope she brings them again next year too!

These are her two girls

Darby and McKenna.

My youngest daughter Cami is on the right.

The dogs took care of any leftovers on the floor. 

My parent's dog Gigi came over to help Piper out with the clean up.

"Did you see that?  I called it first."

  

"Please give us turkey because we are cute."

The consensus on the Gratitude Cards is that Family is the Most Important thing that people are Thankful for.

Followed by their

friends, health, and their dogs.

Funny how no one talked about their car, computer, clothes, our any other material things?

It's the simple things that are the most important to all of us. 

I hope you and your family had an amazing Thanksgiving Day together!

Thanks for checking it out.