Our Christmas 2012

Hope you all had a beautiful holiday!  My Christmas was so amazing and relaxing!  It was so great to be able to celebrate the holidays with my family.  We ate well, laughed alot and relaxed like we were on a serious vacation :).  I could not have asked for a better Christmas.  Below are some pictures from my Christmas tablescape.

For those of you who watch my videos on youtube, you followed me on my journey of setting up for Christmas.  It is so nice to now be able to show you the pictures of how everything turned out.  Hope you like and hope that you had a beautiful holiday.

I loved how my strawberry tree turned out!  It was so easy to do using a styro foam cone and tooth picks.  I got this inspiration from Pinterest.  I used spinach leaves to fill in areas on the tree.  I was able to serve this tree for my Christmas Eve coctail party along with at Christmas breakfast the next morning.  I just added oranges for the breakfast table.  I will definitely do this again!

My shrimp coctail was a hit!  I simply used my martini glasses and placed the shrimp around the edges.  Then added cocktail sauce in the center.  I also had additional shrimp in silver trays.  I love how the shrimp cocktails fit perfectly on my large Michael Aram tray.  I got this inspiration from my friend Angela who served this at a party I attended at her house about a year ago.

My ham rolls are such a easy appetizer!  I made this using sliced ham, cream cheese which I mixed with one packet of lipton onion soup.  I garnished the tray with fresh cranberries.  Very filling and tasty.

My Chicken Curry Salad was a crowd pleaser.  I made it using chopped chicken breast, grapes, red apple, walnuts, green onion and mayonaise.

I made the Rum Cake again.  If you are interested in this recipe I have it on a earlier blog.  So easy to do and this cake just has so much flavor.

I made these white chocolate dipped pretzels and a nice compliment to the coctail party table.  I got this inspiration from a fellow youtube channel called Grandma Cheap Cheap.  She makes the best recipes and has such a beautiful personality.  Be sure to check out her channel and subscribe on youtube.

I made homemade chocolate chip cookies along with oatmeal raisen cookies.  I am still eating on these cookies.  They are such a great little holiday treat.

I wish that I could take credit for making this beautiful cake, but I did not.  I got this cake at my local publix bakery.  It is the peach sensation cake.

I served up some nice flavorful wings which were a great warm appetizer.

As a special addition I got some glass bottled coke and peanuts.  Everyone really enjoyed these.   My inspiration for this was my father.  He use to tell me how as a kid he loved glass bottle coke with peanuts.

This is my Pineapple Cheeseball.  I have made this on several occasions.  It is a combination of cream cheese, crushed pineapples, walnuts and green onion.

The wine tasting activity turned out to be so much fun!  Everyone really enjoyed it and we had such a blast.  The cheese board was so much fun to put together.  I had a combination of cheese, olives, bread and grapes.

As my guest came downstairs Christmas morning I had the diningroom table set up buffet style with their breakfast.  I added more oranges and strawberries to my tree.  I also had a variety of breakfast pastries.

I rolled their silverware in white linen napkins, tied with ribbon and placed on a silver tray.

I got this inspiration from my fellow youtube friend live love latte.  She did a tablescape in which she put the keurig pods in the coffee cup and was so cute.  I put a combination on regular and decaf pods in the cups.

I made a breakfast casserole which was very hearty and filling for my guest.  This is such a great dish to make, because you can make it ahead of time and then just bake it when ready.  It is a combination of eggs, bread, cheese and Jimmy Dean sausage.

I had the orange juice beside their breakfast plates on this little table.  If you watched my shopping haul video a few months ago, you will remember when I purchased this beautiful breakfast dispenser.  This was the first time that I used it and it worked perfectly.

Christmas evening I hosted another activity, which was this dessert tasting.  Everyone really enjoyed and i will definitely do this again!

Here is a dessert I came up with.  In mini glasses I just layered: crumbled graham crackers, slice of banana, chocolate pudding and whip cream.  I topped it off with a carmel and garnished with a piece of banana.

These are red velvet cupcakes that I purchased from my local bakery.  I then garnished them with strawberries.  I cut the strawberries open and filled with whip cream.