Sparkly Holiday Buffet with a Starry Backdrop

It's party season!! I love having a few easy-to-pull off party decorating tricks up my sleeve and this new chalkboard paper + garland idea is one of my favorites yet! (Here's another, more summery idea)

I've loved partnering with Target this year for their holiday campaign, so of course I went there first to buy some supplies for my buffet table and the backdrop.

Some of our law school friends used to have a Christmas wassail party each year when we lived in Boston and I love keeping the tradition alive! Wassail is delicious and easy to make. I use a version of this recipe when we serve it hot, but the general idea is apple cider, cranberries, oranges, cinnamon and clove. Yum!

The pretty drink dispenser can be found here (and it actually works well, unlike so many drink dispensers I've had in the past!). The snowflake tumblers and the copper mugs are also from Target. The blush goblets are vintage.

The metallic linen table cloth has just the right amount of shimmer! It's on sale right now too.

Swedish saffron buns (or St. Lucia buns) are a holiday staple in our house and they pair so well with a cup of hot wassail or hot chocolate. I served them on this pretty mercury glass tumbling block platter, and coconut cupcakes on the round gold platter.

I threw some candies and cookies (peppermint chocolate-covered Joe Joe's!) on a few serving trays and little gold bowls too, and that was it! Easy and pretty! I love how Target is mixing metals in their holiday line - gold, silver and copper all mix together so well.

This hammered gold tray is a new favorite and the pewter bowl is the perfect size for holiday nuts. My girls think that it can't be Christmas time without a big bowl of nuts out on the coffee table. :)

I'll have another post about our holiday decor this year I'm sure, but we did lots of white and cream and just a hint of barely there blush. And then a punch-in-the-face dose of neon pink every now and then, just to keep things exciting. :)

The pink and cream poinsettias are really helping with my color scheme.

I always like to have a food table in a common room, or at least out of the kitchen, so that the kitchen can be a place for prep (read: messy). This is the first time we've used the bookshelves as a backdrop for our food table and I'm LOVING the look! It's so nice to have a pretty place to put the food that is also convenient to both seating areas.

I picked up two $6 fresh cedar garlands at Trader Joe's and a cream and a pink poinsettia plant. I used a bit of floral wire and a few small pieces of duct tape to secure the garland to the shelves first.

And then I added a bit more floral wire to attach the three poinsettia blooms to the garland.

We hung the garland on top of three strips of this chalkboard paper runner. Can I just say that I am OBSESSED with this paper?! The finish is so matte and deep - it's gorgeous and it really works like a chalkboard. I think there are a million ways to use this genius product!

I drew a star pattern on our paper with white chalk. It's a super quick, very easy, and just the right amount of festive, I think.

I'm so happy with how this party buffet turned out! It was super inexpensive, but it looked really nice I think and felt special for our guests. I'm excited to play with variations on this theme! :)

This post is sponsored by Target. Shop Home Décor for modern luxury made easy.

Mixing It Up This Thanksgiving!

We're getting ready to head up to my parents' house for Thanksgiving this week. We all pitch in and help with the meal, but my mom is a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen! Her pies are legendary and I can't wait to over-indulge on Thursday (shhh - don't tell my doctor).  My favorite part of Thanksgiving though, even more than the eating, is actually the cooking and preparing part. Especially when there are a million people crammed in the kitchen and we're all joking and telling stories about Thanksgivings past. The best. :)

You can always count on the good ol' carbelicious, high-calorie standbys to be on our menu - turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole and homemade rolls - but we like to try different foods for the side dishes and veggies each year.

NatureBox, my favorite monthly snack subscription service, invited me to use some of their healthy and delicious snacks to make a few of our sides dishes. I made a kale salad with their Baked Sweet Potato fries and a roasted asparagus side dish with their Cheddar and Onion Sunflower Kernels. Both were super delicious and passed the Thanksgiving menu test! :)

I tweaked this recipe for the salad and this recipe for the asparagus. The NatureBox snacks added a little extra crunch to both! Those sweet potato fries were already on my NatureBox favorites list though, so I knew they'd be great in the salad. I seriously could have eaten this whole giant bowl-full myself. YUM.

Something that I really love about NatureBox is they have more than 100 snacks, so every month I can pick a few tried-and-true favorites and a couple new ones too. Having healthy snacks in new flavors at the ready has practically saved my life this pregnancy. For six months, just the idea of a hot meal made me queasy. I've been keeping a few bags in my car's center console, which has been a game-changer for both me and my kids. No more hangry Komendas!

Something new and exciting: If you are a US-based first time subscriber, NatureBox will send you a FREE trial box of their most popular snacks by signing up here!

ALSO, NatureBox is giving away TWO six-month subscriptions today! You can enter to win by clicking here, browsing the NatureBox snack list, and then commenting on this post with the snacks you'd love to try. 

Open to US readers only. Contest ends Monday, Dec 1. Good luck! And thank you to NatureBox for sponsoring this post and LGN!  :)

Lemon Mint Water and My Soma Carafe

I've been trying to drink a lot more water during this pregnancy so when Soma reached out about letting me try one of their gorgeous, modern water-filtering carafes, I jumped at the chance. I've been so nauseated my entire pregnancy that any funny taste in my water just about sets me over the edge (I guess I should just feel lucky that my other pregnancies have been really easy, right?). The idea of super-filtered, super clean water that didn't come from a plastic bottle sounded amazing to me.

A few things I appreciated right away about my Soma: The filter works fast (unlike other water filter systems I've used in the past). Soma's bio-degradable filters are made from coconut shells and plant resin, so I never have any of those black charcoal flakes floating around in my water. Also, the beautiful shatter-resistant glass carafe keeps the water ice-cold, and looks gorgeous in my fridge and on my dinner table.

Soma delivers a new filter to your door every 60 days, so you never have to remember to buy a new one. The filter has been third-party tested to reduce chlorine, lead, selenium and arsenic in water. It tastes amazingly crisp and clean. I LOVE this water on its own, but I'm working on kicking a diet soda habit, so sometimes I feel like drinking something with a little flavor added.

Recently I've been making citrus mint ice cubes that make it easy to choose water over soda. The ice cubes are so simple to make and I love that I'm not cutting into a new lemon every time I want a little juice in my water. I use a hand-held juicer to juice a few lemons or limes and then add one mint leaf per cube.

Lately I've been throwing in a little bit of fresh peach nectar too before pouring in my filtered water. It's SO good.

I'm so in love with my Soma carafe and how I feel when I'm drinking more water - it's making the days of diet soda seem like a distant memory! ;) And here's some good news: the first 50 readers to use the code LGN15 will receive $15 off their first Soma order! I'm going to grab one or two more for holiday gifts.

Thank you to Soma for sponsoring this post!

Cooking (in my NEW KITCHEN!) with Blue Apron

I first heard about Blue Apron when we lived in the city and some our friends would use the service. One of my good friends would always order a Blue Apron box when she was having house guests or if she knew it was going to be a particularly busy week at work.

We are getting the house ready for that magazine shoot, so my mom offered to take my girls up to her house in the mountains for the week so we could focus on projects. It felt like perfect timing when Blue Apron reached out to see if I would like to try a box for myself this week - the last thing I have time for right now is grocery shopping! So last weekend I got my refrigerated box full of the exact proportions of ingredients I needed to make three meals for Michael and I (though you can order the box for either two, four or six servings).

Meals are $9.99 per person - and they are DELICIOUS. These recipes are for sure keepers.

We made the Fresh Beet Pasta and it was so, so, so good! I pretty much love anything with beets, but the lemony tang and the fresh goat cheese and walnuts seriously put this recipe over the edge for me. Blue Apron uses only the freshest ingredients and they try to source local and artisan goods where possible. They were gorgeous.

I love that there's no commitments with Blue Apron. I can skip or cancel my delivery at any time for the weeks I have a little more bandwidth. But sometimes, like this week, where I feel like my brain might explode if I have to make a single more decision, it's nice to have a menu plan and all the ingredients sitting in front of me on my counter top at 5 pm.

The meals are so easy to prepare, especially with the well-designed recipe sheets. All of them take less than 40 minutes to make, though it will look like you slaved away for hours! Michael is always a good sport, but he definitely has an opinion about food (so it's a good thing he's always willing to cook), but this dish was a total home run with him. I'm excited to make it again when the girls get home! Claire loves anything with goat cheese. :)

Also, I was surprised at how generous the serving sizes were! We ended up sharing with friends who stopped over. It was fun to be like, "What? Oh, this? Yeah, I just threw it together. Just a regular old Wednesday night meal..." (as I'm quickly shoving the Blue Apron recipe sheets into a drawer) ;)

Have you tried Blue Apron? I am so excited to use it again and try some new recipes. They ship nearly everywhere in the US (there's a full map here).

And good news! Blue Apron is giving the first 250 readers two free meals with their first order! Here's where you can sign up. Happy cooking!

Kids Crafts and Cook Smarts

Summer break started for us about a week ago. It's a whole different ball game here in Arizona with 100+ degree weather and indoor activities are a absolute must with the girls! I sat down with them and made a list of crafts we could do together over the next two months. Things that are easy, inexpensive and fun. I've been wanting to paint plain canvas tote bags to use as reusable shopping bags for a while (because my old ones are just about finished, and truly, they're not the cutest), and the girls were super down. I think what they came up with was prettier than anything I could have created by myself. :)

I watered down basic acrylic craft paint with one part paint to three parts water. It goes on smoother, dries quicker, and makes for a way easier clean up. It also ended up being a fun lesson in abstract painting. We walked around the house first and pointed out the art and patterns that looked more abstract and they looked closely and the paintings and made notes about how to get the look. 

So cute, right? These new bags are making grocery trips so much more appealing lately, and I've desperately needed a bit of a kick in that department! If I have a menu for the week and a written out list, things are great. But life gets in the way and sometimes I end up at the store stocking up on the basics and come home feeling like I have nothing to make a complete meal. I came back from the store a last week and Heather pulled a jar of peanut butter out of the bag and said "Um, we have like three jars of peanut butter in the pantry already!" Oops. 

It took only a few minutes of poking around on Cook Smarts to fall in love with the concept after they reached out to me. The first thing that jumped out was the shopping lists. Cook Smarts sends you four recipes on Friday for the following week (you can use their set menu plan or customize your own) and a shopping list of everything you need for the meals. It's broken up into categories like "produce" and "spices". You can print the list or email it to yourself, which is a huge selling point for me because then I always have my list with me on my phone. Their site is super easy to use and beautifully photographed and organized- which always helps. 

I decided to jump right into the week Cook Smarts was currently on and make the Three Tomato Spaghetti with Kale and Apple Salad. I'm so, so impressed with how easy and simple the recipe was. Not only did it take exactly how long they said it would (35 minutes) to cook, but it was insanely simple and most importantly- delicious! Like really, really good. The dressing on the salad was perfection and the whole family ate it up! I can't wait to try more recipes. Two other meals this week are Batterless Chile Rellenos and Chicken Fajita Bowls- I'm so in. 

There are also the cutest little videos on every recipe with some cooking tips- like how to dice a shallot or the best way to slice cabbage. When you sign up, you can choose to try a starter account and then you can try out three meal plans for free, and starting at about $6 each month, you can have access to an absolute mountain of delicious and easy recipes.

I texted a few of my friends about Cook Smarts after discovering how customizable the meals are. Every single recipe has a gluten-free, paleo, and vegetarian option - seriously so convenient for families with food restrictions! My sister's family has gluten allergies and we cook a lot of meals together, so this feature has been coming in handy for me lately!

Cook Smarts is generously sponsoring today's give away of a $250 gift certificate to Whole Foods and an adorable reusable grocery tote. To enter, just sign up for a FREE Cook Smarts account and leave a comment here with which recipe is calling your name!

Contest ends next Friday at midnight.

PS - for 30% off your first meal plan, use the code LGNCOOKS. (Code expires on June 12)