Okay, so… I’m back to filling in blanks from The Little Things We Do. 

I just like it too much to not participate!

1.   The holiday season is  my favorite time of year. I love warm layers, hot drinks and all my cool friends. haha. No, but really, I love spending time with family and friends. I love all the extra excuses to throw/attend great parties.

2.   Snow makes me cringe. I’m really glad that it doesn’t snow too much here in Portland. But, then again, if it did I might not dislike it so much. The whole city shuts down when it snows here. It is unreal and very unfun   .

3.  The best comfort food to eat when it’s cold out is    cookies! Actually, I’m pretty much for all baked goods when it is cold out.     .

4. Winter is the best time for   wearing things that sparkle .

6.  When it comes to holiday gifts I prefer to   make them. I really love the idea of DIY gift-giving. I love finding and buying gifts (and I do that as well most the time) but, I really like giving at least one handmade item with each gift. Even if it is just a DIY gift tag .

7.  If I were to rate my excitement about the holiday season on a scale from 1-10, I would say I am at about a   7. I’m so very excited for so many things, but also quite overwhelmed. I almost feel that my excitement is causing my expectations to be too high. I need to remember that my little man won’t care near as much as me if his first Christmas was snazzy.

I disappeared for a bit. Sorry about that. I think life just got too busy for me to blog about it all. 

Isn’t that weird? When I actually have a ton of party planning, prep and execution I am too busy to blog about it. And, when I have a ton of time to blog there is nothing going on and I’m posting about other people’s parties! 

Geez. 

So, I thought I’d share a quick update via Iphone pics to show you that I’ve been busy and let you know that there are fun party posts in the works. 

Went to Slappy Cakes in Portland to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

We then had a fun day enjoying the beautiful fall weather. I love Fall in Portland. 

I’ve been avoiding the many things I need to be doing by playing in the kitchen. 

I’ve had a lot of extra produce—we get weekly bins of organic and (usually) local veggies from this AWESOME company called Organics to You. It has made me look up a lot of fun new recipes so that none of the produce is wasted. Above is only a small portion of the things I’ve made these past few weeks: Cranberry Orange Bread, Drunken Cranberry Sauce, Apple Spice Cupcakes (recipe coming to blog soon), and Cranberry Orange Muffins. I also baked and purred a ghost pumpkin to use in pumpkin pie and pumpkin cranberry cookies. 

I threw a rustic-styled birthday party for my friend Alicia. And, believe me…throwing a dinner party for 20 people in my tiny apartment= a very busy Jenni.  Real party post coming soon!

Some of my recent projects have been party or gift related… but, the one pictured on the top was just because I was avoiding the projects I needed to be doing. I got prints from Shutterfly.com and went crazy on my fridge. I love it so much I am thinking about doing the same to my hallway. 

I am also working on funny hats and bow ties to be used at my upcoming birthday party ( a fancy pants  themed event). And, because Pinterest has so many great ideas I used a few of them: fabric poms and t-shirt scarf. 

Thanksgiving was fun as always. I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I was also in charge of providing a couple of fun cocktails for our event. The Apple Cider Margarita was delish and my S’more Martini recipe will be on the blog soon.

On Thanksgiving Day (since we were all dressed nice) I threw together a quick holiday photoshoot for our Christmas cards. Good thing I did too…. Cardstore.com had an amazing 70% off sale on Black Friday. So, one more item checked off the huge holiday to-do list!

Oh, and I’ve been spending my time loving on these two guys. It was wonderful having a long weekend with the hubby and my little man is growing up so quick!

Oh, and if you follow me on instagram I’m sorry that a lot of these photos are a repeat for  ya! 

But, if you don’t follow me and want to my username is plainojeni!