For my very first post and with the holidays barely past, I thought I would present some of my recent hostess-related projects that were easy to create and added nice touches to our celebrations. I hope you enjoy the following!

After witnessing the technique on a TV baking competition, I couldn’t wait to try sugaring rosemary and cranberries to decorate a snow-colored cake. I had been craving my favorite carrot cake for some time and decided that the rich dessert would make the perfect confection to smother with a delicious and bright cream cheese frosting. I was thrilled with the results of the simple process in creating the sparkling garnish and definitely plan to broaden my experiments with candied decorations. Anyone can do this! Leave a comment if you would like any of the recipes and I’ll post if there’s interest.

I had a large number of guests for Christmas dinner with two languages represented at the table. I decided that I wanted place cards to organize the seating so that everyone was next to someone that they could communicate with—and enjoy that communication. I did not have enough of my real holders available so I rummaged through my crafting supplies and decided that some surplus ribbon, decorating picks, and left over yogurt cups (Yoplait’s glass Oui French-Style Yogurt) would do the trick. I designed the names in both languages so that everyone could read them. A little clip-art dressed them up and the cost to produce was $0. And, they can easily be reconfigured for any holiday meal. Please share your ideas for seat mapping!

Not terribly creative, however, I am going to share the following anyway! My father adores Christmas cookies and I promised him a wide variety of homemade creations this year. The challenge became how to store clearly identified varieties as my mother doesn’t like a couple of his favorites. Since I did not want plastic storage containers scattered all over my kitchen bar, I re-purposed some glass canisters, added removable chalk labels (I used a silver scrap-booking pen for lettering) and the problem was solved!

Last, but not least, I am sharing the following just because she is so darn cute. My furbaby and constant companion Sassy decided to add the perfect touch beneath my tree… herself.

Thank you for reading (if somebody actually is) and I wish you a wonderful new year.