Our Holiday Prep with Hometalk (and a Pesto Pasta Recipe)

I love Christmas time.  It's such a special time of year.

I love getting our home all dressed up for the holidays and spending time with good friends and family.  Making special treats to share.  The spirit of giving.  

I made Cake Pops for the first time this year.  They turned out wonderful.  I was excited to show them off and share them.  It's so gratifying to try a new recipe and sharing your successful results with others.

Some of the cake pops are being displayed in this gorgeous new Sadie Cake Plate and Cloche, from Wayfair.   Displaying them inside the cloche like this makes them the focal point of the room...and they look amazingly delicious.

Click on photo above for more about the cake pops I made

I'm looking forward to decorating this cloche with something new for each holiday  or season.  I've always wanted a beautiful cloche like this.  It has so many possibilities.

With Christmastime comes so much to do and prepare for.  It's nice to do some low-key entertaining and enjoy ourselves.  

Don't be so busy you forget to enjoy the warmth of the season with friends and family.

This year we have set our home up with several entertaining stations:

 A gourmet coffee station for the adults.

A hot cocoa station for the kiddos, complete with marshmallows and candy canes.  I'll keep this one out for the rest of winter.  It's such a hit in our house.  Call me a coffee-aholic, but that makes my boy a cocoa-aholic for sure!  :)

Of course the adults can have hot cocoa too if they want.

Or even water ;)

I like to put a pretty pitcher with ice water out so people can help themselves whenever they feel thirsty.

And a mini bar with wine and cocktails.  Please help yourself.

Just a few finishing details will bring the whole event together once you have stations set up and ready.

Layer the holiday decorations with the treats until it feels complete...

Cake Pops

Roasted Almonds

Pops of red

Have a batch of hot cocoa steaming in the pot before the guests arrive.

That way they can get right down to the fun stuff.

I like having a fun activity ready for the little kids to do when they get here.  Makes them feel special.  

I prepare a delicious pesto pasta salad ahead of time.  It is so easy to make and is always a huge hit whenever I make it. It tastes delicious cold or hot, and you can turn it into a main course just by adding grilled chicken breast to the pasta.

Click HERE for recipe

And another thing I like to do to keep things simple and stress-free when entertaining is to have a fresh fruit bowl and a veggie tray.

It's not about the time you spend preparing...it's about the time you spend enjoying the ones you love!

Now all we need are the guests to arrive.  :)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

If you haven’t been to Hometalk, it’s a wonderful website celebrating projects and rooms from homeowners all over the country.  Members can share their home projects and get ideas, inspiration, and professional advice on anything home related.  

My party tips are being shared at Hometalk as well.

Hometalk and Wayfair partnered with some bloggers to celebrate the season with these beautiful cloches, like you see here in my post. Thanks to Wayfair for providing this beautiful cloche. I wasn’t compensated to write this post about my party. 

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Our Christmas Home Tour 2012

 Welcome to our Christmas Home

Our Hot Chocolate Station

Doesn't every home need a hot chocolate station for the holidays?

Shabby wooden tree

"Wise Men Still Seek Him" 

Mini Bar

Handmade burlap and ticking stockings

Advent Calendar

Sparkly wreath with blue Wedgewood snowflake

Some sparkle and shine

Snowflakes hanging from the chandelier 

You really should go check out the Christmas project over at the cafe today...it's too cute to miss ;)

Merry Christmas!

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Serving Tray Tutorial and a Hot Chocolate Station

Our very own HOT CHOCOLATE STATION!!!

BUT...

 Before this HOT CHOCOLATE STATION was possible I had to create the perfect serving tray.  I love trays.  They make nice little vignettes on your counter or tabletops when combined with a few accessories.  And it's so easy to move them to another location if you end up needing the space.  They can be coordinated with the colors and style of any room.  You may have seen my first serving tray here.  These trays started out life as unfinished oak cabinet doors.  We were lucky to find a bunch of these doors being sold at an amazing price and of course we snatched them up.  So many possibilities!

I decided to finish this tray in a distressed black, so I gave it a couple coats of semi-gloss black paint and let it dry.  Then I started my search for the perfect words or saying.  I quickly settled on Galatians 5:22-23.  Isn't it nice!?  So I went to work printing my version of the quote in several different fonts.  I decided against cutting these words on my Cricut...either in vinyl or card stock.  Because of the thin, small letters it would have been a disaster trying to cut, arrange and adhere all of these letters.  Instead I printed up my words in the text size I wanted, then I placed the words where I wanted them on my board:



I traced over them with a ball point pen and heavy pressure.  This left slight indentations of the words on the board.  SEE:

Please forgive the flash glare!  I wanted to make sure I got a shot of the words traced into the board.  You can see them if you look closely.

It took a few LONG minutes to get all of the words traced onto the board.  My hand was a bit achy from the pressure I was putting into it! 

At this point, I was going to get out a very fine point paintbrush and some white craft paint, but I remembered the white Pen-touch Fine Point Paint Pen I got for writing on photographs.  I think this was a lifesaver.  I'm having a hard time imagining painting all of these words with a tiny little paintbrush.  I only wish the Pen-touch could have written a tad bit finer.  Either that or I should have done a slightly larger text size!  Although I didn't want to have the text overpower the tray.

Here's what it looked like once all of the text had been gone over with the white paint pen:

Not perfect, but I'm going to rough it up a bit anyway.  I don't like having things looking too new and "perfect" around here.  With all of the kids and activities that go on, I would be a wreck worrying about things getting messed up!

You can believe that at this point my hand was EXTREMELY ACHY.  I do believe it was stuck in a writing position for the rest of the evening.  Sigh...the things we do for our creativity...

After the text was finished I pulled out one of those sanding sponges and distressed the corners, edges, and even roughed up the top a bit where the text is. 

All there was left to do was add my accessories and ingredients for the HOT COCOA STATION:
(The dishes and accessories were all taken from other areas in our home.  We were able to create this without the purchase of any new accessories.  Yay for shopping your own home!!!)

Cocoa, Mini Marshmallows and Candy Canes!  Mmmmm...

Then came some fun Christmas Mugs:

I added in my little Santa Bell...he just seemed to go here. 
I swear, you'd think Starbucks pays me!  Quite the opposite, I tell you.

Our Snowman Cookie Jar:

I LOVE this guy...he holds yummy surprises  :)

 So here is my newest tray, with an inspiring quote, finished with some distressing and white ceramic and silver pulls as handles.  All ready to offer up some hot chocolaty goodness:

My kids are sooo going to love this!  I can't wait for them to see it.

 

I cannot take complete credit for this idea.  Although the designing and creating of the serving tray was all my own and my accessories are completely different than any others I've seen, I was inspired by Someone Else's hot chocolate station.  Creating our very own HOT CHOCOLATE STATION has been on my to-do list since I spotted a darling little cocoa space created in the kitchen at Sweet Something Designs. You'll have to go take a look at Michelle's house all decked out for Christmas and see what else she's been up to.   Michelle has a beautiful design style and her blog is well worth the visit.  :)   Just click the link here  to open Sweet Something Designs in another window.  Maybe even leave her a message and tell her Sherry from Pondered Primed Perfected sent you.  ;)

 Enjoy a sweet treat with your loved ones today,
Sherry

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