Click here to see who the winner of the Christmas Pillow Cover is! If you’re stuck with what to make for dinner this week, my roast is a favorite around here! 🙂
Have a great Tuesday! Stop back tomorrow to see who won the Lily and Val placemats!
There’s still time to enter the last three giveaways below:
The holidays are surrounded by food and the memories being made while creating it. If you have not done so yet, add cookie baking to your list before the 25th rolls around! Put on some Christmas tunes, sip some hot coffee, and whip up this batch of cookies. The chocolate infused with peppermint is the perfect balance of lightening up the richness of the double chocolate. Not that double chocolate anything is ever a bad thing. 😉
Ingredients:
3/4 cup Stonyfield plain greek yogurt
1/2 cup butter (melted)
2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
10 drops peppermint essential oil (or more)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 and 1/3 cups 100% cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 and 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
What to do:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all wet ingredients and mix. Fold in the dry ingredients and then lightly mix. I used my Levoons measuring spoons for all my dry ingredients to make measuring so much easier. It scraps off all the excess while measuring and I loved it! Form the dough into one inch balls and lightly flatten. I like to use this scoop. It works like a charm! After my batter was prepped and the oven was heated, I scooped my goodies onto my Silapt mat. This was the first time I used it and absolutely loved it! The mat can be put right on a baking sheet and put in the oven. I didn’t have the grease the baking sheet at all and the clean up was ten times easier! Bake for about 12 minutes. Pull out of oven and let cool for about 10 minutes.
Each day this week I will be announcing the winners from last week’s giveaway week! You can see if you won the blanket scarf from last week’s start of the giveaway week, here! Thank you to everyone who entered and to Blooms and Linen for the beautiful scarf! Also, there’s still time to enter the other giveaways below!
Some of my best friends throw an annual, “Ugly Sweater Christmas Party.” The last few years Eric and I have worn family member’s sweaters that weren’t exactly the most attractive. 😉 Last year our small group had the same themed party. So this year we decided to up our game a little since there are still both, “Ugly Sweater Parties” planned. Plus, it’s always fun to wear something festive to school the week of Christmas. I bought the sweater above and LOVE it! It’s extremely comfortable and longer! This will be so nice to wear with leggings or jeans. I ordered a small, (which is the size I normally wear) and it fits great! I linked a bunch of my favorites below. Be sure to scroll over and tell me which one is your favorite!
Aren’t they adorable?! I mean, ugly. 😉
Two.Eric looks awesome in this sweater! I love it and so does he! The men’s selection is definitely not lacking.
This week of giveaways has been a blast! We’re celebrating our last day by giving away a $50 gift card to Jessica N Designs to one very lucky winner! You could buy something special for you or a friend for Christmas! I listed some of my favorites above and you can read all of my posts with my favorite products from her shop below! Remember each giveaway is open for one full week and the winners will be listed each day next week! Be sure to check back to see if you won! I hope your Friday is festive and flies by. 😉
A Christmas tree farm and each other were all we needed to squeeze in a picture for Christmas cards this year. It really is the best time of year to capture the changes each year brings. It’s also the perfect reason to send snail mail to the ones you love.The best part of creating our Tiny Prints Christmas Cards was they did all of the work for us! We uploaded a few pictures to test out which design was our favorite and played around with fonts and colors. It was completely personalized to how we wanted it to look. For those of you who dread addressing each and every envelope (like myself), free customized addressing is available just for you! Eeek! You still have time to order these beauties before Santa comes down the chimney in just 16 more shut-eyes! Capture the moments with the ones you love and have yourself the merriest little Christmas from our family to yours!
On the fourth day of Christmas my favorite author, Shauna Niequiest gave to one lucky winner, a signed copy of her fourth book, ‘Present Over Perfect’! I tried to put into words how lovely this book is but I think she says it best. It is the perfect reminder for this time of year and always.
” A few years ago, I found myself exhausted and isolated, my soul and body sick. I was tired of being tired, burned out on busy. And, it seemed almost everyone I talked with was in the same boat: longing for connection, meaning, depth, but settling for busy.
I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, writer, and I know all too well that settling feeling. But over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned a way to live, marked by grace, love, rest, and play. And it’s changing everything.
Present Over Perfect is an invitation to this journey that changed my life. I’ll walk this path with you, a path away from frantic pushing and proving, and toward your essential self, the one you were created to be before you began proving and earning for your worth.”
Written in Shauna’s warm and vulnerable style, this collection of essays focuses on the most important transformation in her life, and maybe yours too: leaving behind busyness and frantic living and rediscovering the person you were made to be. Present Over Perfect is a hand reaching out, pulling you free from the constant pressure to perform faster, push harder, and produce more, all while maintaining an exhausting image of perfection.
Shauna offers an honest account of what led her to begin this journey, and a compelling vision for an entirely new way to live: soaked in grace, rest, silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection with the people that matter most to us.
In these pages, you’ll be invited to consider the landscape of your own life, and what it might look like to leave behind the pressure to be perfect and begin the life-changing practice of simply being present, in the middle of the mess and the ordinariness of life.