holiday challenge day 2

I'm going to let you in on a secret, after only one day I was ready to throw in the towel on this holiday challenge. I'm lame I know. However I am linking up with Neely again Also I had intentions of posting pics and recipes of my thanksgiving but my camera cord is MIA. However as soon as I find it those babies will be going up.



So now onto day 2 of the challenge, my holiday traditions.


Tradition #1
Getting crazy on Christmas eve after Mass. I have one word for you santa-gria punch. A local winery makes literally THE best sangria wine and for the holiday season they change up the labels and call it santa-gria. We go to a family friend's house and drink it all night long and its even more yummy with the edition of pears,and apples.

my mom's friend and I at her house 2 years ago


Tradition #2
The girls in my family always get matching christmas pajamas on christmas eve to wear. Also my sister and I share her bed that night. When we wake up its fun to sit and wait until our grandparents come over and we are allowed downstairs.



last christmas eve in my sisters bed "sleeping"



what are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Giveaway Winner Announced!

Yes, I know I said I was posting this tomorrow, but after figuring out who had won I didn't want to wait anymore announcing it. After using true random number generator, I learned I have no idea how to do a screenshot and show you who actually won. So I would like to congratulate lucky number 6 Ashley for winning my giveaway! I'll email you soon! Thank you to everyone who participated! I already have a plan for doing in the near future!

my favorite gift ever recieved

Today I'm linking up with Neely and Amber for their holiday challenge. Everyday for the next 2 weeks I'll be posting different things about my favorite parts of the holiday season.




My favorite christmas gifts ever were

the pandora turtle charm from the family I babysit

and the cinderella's carriage from chamilla

I love my pandora bracelet and would have shared pictures of it, but it's gotten really dirty and needs to be cleaned. Tomorrow I'll be announcing my giveaway winner and sharing pictures from thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Plans

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and this year I convinced my mom it was my turn to plan everything for it and when I started planning it my little type A heart got all giddy. I mean I probably have about 5 different lists for Thursday. Theres a timeline of days leading up to Thursday of what I'm baking and cooking when, my grocery shopping lists organized by what to get at what store (it took over 4 hours to get everything) and maybe a drawing or two of how I'm designing pies. So after all this planning I thought I'd share some of the recipes I'll be making Thursday.
Firstly for breakfast Thursday morning I'll be making this cake with my leftover apples. These yummy parkerhouse rolls, coleslaw, succotash, stuffing, mashed potatoes (all simple not really recipe recipes from my mom and grandmom) those are sides we always include in our thanksgiving menu. I've decided to add to our normal sides and also make these carmelized brussel sprouts and glazed carrots (cant find the recipe online but if you all want it i'll post it later) and then mini pies for everyone in their favorite flavors. I think its been narrowed down to 2 pecan, 2 pumpkin, 1 cherry and my favorite 2 apple cranberry pies. Writing it all out makes it seem more daunting now but I think I'll be able to successfully complete everything with my awesome timeline and killer jams (ben rector, amos lee, avett brothers)

now onto just peachy's top 5 tuesday

1. The food
I dont know if you could tell from all the plans discussed above but I really love the food aspect of Thanksgiving. Like really love it. It maybe because I'm a culinary student but even before that I always looked forward to it.

2. The traditions
In my family we all have different things we make on Thanksgiving, my dad and I always make the mashed potatoes together and I always eat the most of them out of all my family, my mom always makes her stuffing and my brothers usually make broccoli and cheese which has sadly been cut this year. Also we have to have tomato juice to drink even though my dad is the only one who drinks it, its just something we always have. Lastly succotash which I thought was a universal thing on thanksgiving but after recent research which yes I did for fun, I learned its a north eastern kinda thing. It yummy and you should all check it out.

3. Being in the kitchen with my family
Yes this too probably has to do with the fact that I'm a culinary student,I love being in the kitchen, it's probably my favorite room in the house. Being in the kitchen cooking with my family is even more fun.

4. Post turkey naps
I probably take a half hour to hour nap between turkey time and eating dessert and its always the best nap I take all year.

5. Mouse on the Maylower
Mouse on the Mayflower is probably the best and only Thanksgiving movie out there. My children will watch this one day. We watched it every year when we were little and now have started watching it again.

Hope you enjoyed this excessively long post on Thanksgiving if youre still reading it after my crazed menu planning.

** dont forget to sign up for my first giveaway!

a giveaway

Awhile back on twitter I announced I would be doing a giveaway whenever I reached 50 followers and this weekend I saw that I had and then when I woke up this morning I saw I had reached 51! Thank you all who follow and post everyday you are all so great! To celebrate this I have decided to giveaway somethings I'm loving lately, I was going to post a picture of all the goodies but I kinda want it to be a surprise so the winner will have to share when they receive it.

The rules:
1 entry: be a follower of the friendliest flower
1 entry; follow me on twitter and tweet about the giveaway
1 entry: tell me in a comment one of your favorite things about the holiday season

(please make sure to tell me in the comments when you tweet about the giveaway!)

hope you all enjoy! The giveaway will close next Monday the 28th :)



sorry once again for the lack of photos, working from my mom's laptop has hindered my posting and using photos that aren't on her computer. I know I get really bored by pictureless posts but I promise it wont be that long before Im back to regular blogging on my laptop when its fixed.

hey it's okay thursday (a first)

This is a first for me to link up for hey it's okay thursday but I've been making a running a list since last week so I thought I'd share

Hey it's okay.....

to have a list of nail polishes you want to try once the semester is over, and for a few short days over thanksgiving break. (i picked essie: case study)

to buy chaptick/lipgloss every time I go to the store, I've currently put myself on a halt from buying them its gotten so bad.

to make lists to pass the time during classes

to be excited about the delivery of my erin condren planner, I have a countdown going!

to stalk the stores until the holiday editions of my favorite magazines come out

to watch the pawnee rangers episode of parks&rec whenever I feel like it and still laugh every time!

to be seriously annoyed that my laptop wont be fixed for a long time and have to borrow my family members laptops whenever I need to do work.

to live off of my iphone until my sweet little laptop is returned to me.

to buy about 5 different sets of christmas cards at the store because I couldn't chose which one I liked best.

to want to punch everyone that posted a status about breaking dawn on facebook. (sorry if you're a fan!

what are you totally okay with today?

thanks to emily for helping me figure out how to link up!

an update of sorts

So my poor little laptop has about fifty viruses and can not be looked at until after thanksgiving which kinda crimps my blogging style. Whats even worse is now about a million ideas have popped into my head about what to write about and what to change and everything. And I especially hate posts that don't include pictures so my dear little followers please stick around until my laptop and I are reunited http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand follow me elsewhere:

-- twitter: some of my tweets are a bit ridic but its real life
-- pintrest: lots of foodie stuff and crafts galore

hope everyone enjoys their thanksgiving breaks! and remember only one more follower until I'm doing a giveaway!! also I just bought the cutest christmas cards so if anyone would like to recieve a lovely card from me shoot me an email! sorry once again for the lack of photos and posts lately.

spiced peach butter

This is not what I had planned to post today but I'm not on my own laptop so bear with me. My poor little laptop is infected with about a million viruses so at the moment I'm borrowing my mom's laptop, while perusing her crazy collection of photos she has on here I found pictures of when I made spiced peach butter over the summer. In August my sister and I went and picked 45 pounds of peaches and while I really do love peaches that was a bit much, so being the obsessed canner that I am, I found a recipe for spiced peach butter that was made in the crock pot and man was it good. And then I got really into and made these cute little tags to go with it, because canning turns my ocd, perfectionist, type A ways into overdrive. So please enjoy these pictures, the recipe and a resource for canning if you so choose to fall in love with it as I have. Hopefully by next week I'll have my laptop back and be able to share with you my appplesauce I made with my dad this saturday.

--make sure to check out my ornament swap and comment/email to sign up!
-- only one more follower until a giveaway of crafts and some of my favorite things!

ornament swap

I saw this idea on another blog and I thought it would be a cute idea to share with all you lovely followers. An ornament swap.

The rules:
- email me at mkdub91@gmail.com with the subject line: ORNAMENT SWAP, in the email include your email address and a link to your blog
- the cutoff date is november 12th and hopefully I will get partners sent out by the 14th
- send your ornaments by november 28th, that gives everyone plenty of time to talk to your partners, find an ornament and mail them out
- maximum price for ornaments is 10 dollars, I know the holidays are crazy and you have to buy a million gifts so just keep it simple. make sure you look into what your partner likes when buying your ornament
- include a christmas card what your favorite part of christmas is, favorite christmas quote or why you chose that ornament
- make sure to blog about your ornament when you get it and share pictures!

****only one more follower until a giveaway!!

quote of the week

details of a sandwich

I think we've all been lusting over not without salt's fall sandwich posted a few weeks back. I saw it everywhere, pintrest, blogs you name it and finally I caved in and made it. Honestly I'm not sure why I waited so long, its so easy to pull together once you have all the ingredients which is a very short list. To take this sandwich to the next level and because I was feeling productive/energetic I went ahead and made the french bread for it. Yes it might have took me the majority of my saturday but in my opinion it was worth the weight. I'll post if people are interested the recipe for the bread I used later because now its time to focus on the main event.



This sandwich is seriosuly super easy. All you need is honey ham, smoked ham, gruyere cheese, french bread and apple butter. When I read this aloud to my family the majority of them gave me a look like your going to add apple butter to a sandwich and buy gross cheese for it? And I was all I love apple butter an gruyere cheese is super yummy and even more yummy when melted!



Basically all you do is build your sandwich, put it under the broiler for 3-5 minutes and its done, however our broiler is wanky so I used a toaster oven we have and it worked just as well. The original sandwich has good mustard and arugula added to the end but I had neither so I didnt add it.