Rainbow Bright

I 've always loved bright stripes! I'm loving these color blocked rainbow sweaters right now to brighten up the winter!

Bloomingdales // ASOS // ASOS // H&M

Amazon // Amazon // Forever 21 // Amazon

 

By the way, I saw a few of these sweaters in boutiques but they were sold out. I checked Amazon and I found better pricing and some even on Prime. Good tip to always check there too!

J.Crew Playa Pre-Sale

Do you follow J.Crew on Instagram? If you don't, go do it right now! Today they have a pre-sale on their new Playa line and the swimsuits are super cute and priced really well! J.Crew one piece swimsuits are usually around the $100 mark, but these are around $50. You have to go through the Instagram link to get to this line, you won't be able to find it on the website. Here are some of my favorites, but they come in many colors and also have a few bikini options.

Christmas Trifle

I made this for our family get together on Christmas day and it was a huge hit! It was so good, that I think I will make it again next year and start a tradition!

The original recipe is from Taste of Lizzy T, I changed it up a bit.  Here is my recipe:

Christmas Peppermint Cheesecake Trifle

Ingredients:

Cake
1 box of Duncan Hines red velvet cake mix
4 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1 1/4 cup milk

Cheesecake filling
12 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup butter softened
2 tsp peppermint extract
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
8 ounces of cool whip

1 package of peppermint Oreos with green filling, quartered with knife or just crush for times sake!

Directions:
Prepare cake mix by combining box mix, eggs, oil and milk. Bake in preferred pan. I used a 9x13" pan. Bake as directed on box. Let cake cool completely before cutting into squares or bite size pieces.

Prepare filling by mixing together cream cheese and butter with a mixer. Once smooth, add peppermint extract, and powdered sugar. Continue mixing until well combined. Fold in cool whip.

To assemble trifle, start with a layer of cake, then cheesecake filling, then Oreos, repeat until full. You will have about half of a cake left and plenty of filling. If you have 2 trifle bowls, it would probably make 2! Or you could use a larger bowl to begin with.

Refrigerate and enjoy!

2017 Christmas

Some pictures of our family Christmas activities this year.

Dan and I hosted our annual Christmas cocktail party again this year. We had a great turnout and lots of fun! Our house is pretty dark, so none of the pictures turned out great, but I like to blog the food so I can remember year to year what I serve.

Chocolate martinis with my sister

 

Christmas with Dan's family.

Roman and his look alike cousin Rye.

 For Christmas with my family, we went to French Lick and visited both the French Lick hotel and West Baden. You can take a trolley between the 2 hotels. We then took the Polar Express.

Roman enjoyed the Polar Express, but mostly for the hot chocolate and cookies.

 It snowed on Christmas Eve!

 

Special day sledding with Grandpa for his 70th birthday!