All three of these recipes are confusingly easy (the dip on the top left in particular, which has a total of two ingredients), and you have to make them. I insist. Trust me.
First up: two-ingredient chili-cheese dip.
You are seeing this correctly: it is a s'more. And a shot. More specifically, it is a shot made out of a s'more. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that these are the easiest things to consume - they require a sort of nibble/sip maneuver that takes a bit of practice - but oh, they are worth the work.
I am 100% on board with every single thing about the movie Moana - seriously, THANK YOU Disney for fiiiiiinally giving us a heroine that we can all get our daughters on board with - and was more than happy to make my daughter's third birthday party Moana-themed, per her request. I was not, however, super psyched about the idea of making my house look like the Summer Blowout aisle at Party City. I mean, surely there was a way to evoke the whole Polynesian-adventure thing without breaking napkins decorated with The Rock (or at least his animated counterpart). ...No?
Here's how we de-Disneyfied our Moana party (while still making all those three-year-old dreams come true).
A few months ago, I asked my daughter what was wanted for her third birthday - fully aware, of course, that she was going to change her mind approximately 1,352,534 times before the day actually arrived.
"Moana cake," she said. Like, immediately, with zero pause for contemplation. "And candy."
Very well.
A friend from the East Coast came to visit a couple of weeks ago, and over dinner she told me that the one thing of mine she really, really covets is my "dish situation" (by which she meant my collection of serving platters and wine glasses and plates and such).
With zero humility, I have to say: I love the collection I’ve amassed over the years. It includes everything from Noritake dinnerware classics (featured in this post; you can see the collection I curated for the brand here) to vintage finds from all over the country, and is constantly evolving as I discover new style pairings that feel fresh. That’s my favorite thing about my collection, actually: every few seasons, I step back and look at it, think about if and how I want to switch it up, and then simply mix a few new pieces to create a completely new look.
Take the tablescape pictured here, for example, which started with a bunch of pieces I already owned:
I have officially decreed today - Sunday - to be the Fourth of July, because the actual Fourth of July is on a Tuesday and having two days to recuperate after Fourth of July festivities sounds like a much better idea to me, especially since I'm the one throwing the party. But since I only decided this on Friday, I was left with next-to-zero time to prepare and/or decorate. Enter: these ridiculously easy (and cute) paper lanterns.
What You Need:
What You Do:
Cinco de Mayo is one of those holidays that only occurs to me when I'm in the middle of it - as in, when I'm sitting in a restaurant and notice the poster reading "CINCO DE MAYO CERVEZAS ONLY $2!!!" and think, Ooh. I should have a beer.
This year, Cinco de Mayo occurred to me several days prior to the actual event for two reasons: The first is that Mollie is throwing a party on Friday, and I just got the email reminder, and the second is that a few days ago I went over to Mollie's house and she showed me how to make the tissue-paper flowers and Ranch Water cocktails that'll be featured at this party. (Related: going to Mollie's house is always a good idea.) So, really, I suppose there's actually only one reason that Cinco de Mayo occurred to me before actual Cinco de Mayo, and that's "I have a friend named Mollie."
These tissue-paper flowers are so cute, and so versatile - you can make them bigger or smaller depending on the size of tissue paper you use, and can choose whatever color palette you want - and they're easy enough to make that you can hand over assembly duties to the kids (so you can focus on those Ranch Water cocktails).
The good news: Oh my GOD is Peepshi - a.k.a. sushi that has been constructed from Peeps and an assortment of other cavity-creating substances - ever cute.
The bad news: Cavity-creating substances are frequently insanely delicious, which means that you will make Peepshi "for the kids"...and in the process eat millions of little Peep remnants (you know, the ones that you cut off in pursuit of a perfectly-shaped piece of nigiri) yourself.
Okay. Now that we've established that you're making Peepshi, because of course you are, let me tell you how to do it. This geniusness was originally created by Serious Eats, but now that I've made one batch and am thus clearly an expert, I'm going to tell you the little discoveries that I made over the course of the Peepshi-making process that I thought were extra wonderful.
I spent 45% of my weekend on the phone with Apple Care, trying to figure out why my computer will not stop giving me the rainbow wheel of death (the answer is that it's officially time for a new one, which is obviously fabulous news), and 45% trying to restore our yard to something resembling its pre-bombogenesis condition (including the construction of a new fence and the removal of many, many sad-looking plants), but I did manage to escape for a minute to head over to my friend Brianna's baby shower, which was so lovely and adorable that I thought I'd share some shots here (with her permission, of course), plus a few more oceanside-inspired party ideas.
My friend Erin - Brianna's sister-in-law - made these cupcake toppers out of fondant and swears they're totally do-able. I think "totally doable" is probably a relative term here, but still: they're so cute they're worth the effort.
"Would you like a bloody slug?"
Come on, how cute are these guys?! I'm aware that the name "Bloody Slug" is mildly unappetizing, but let me assure you: these are suuuuuper delicious and will be consumed within seconds by the children in attendance - so if you want one, trust me and move quickly. (And yeah, they're essentially sugar bombs, but whatever, Halloween is like a Defcon 1 high-fructose disaster anyway. Might as well not fight it.)
So what these are, essentially, are cake pops made with extra frosting so that they sort of collapse on themselves and don't hold on to the exterior coating as well (thereby letting the color of the cake show through). And when the color that's showing through is red and the overall effect is that of a melty, ghost-ish, vaguely slug-like creature, there you go:
