Monday is a holiday!

Did you know that Monday is a holiday? Yep, a holiday I said.

It's National Pretzel Day and Pretzelmaker is giving away free pretzels to celebrate!



According to utahshoppingsecrets.com, "Pretzelmaker®/Pretzel Time® will once again host a day-long National Pretzel Day celebration on April 26 at participating stores across the country. This year the company is putting a new "twist" on the holiday by asking customers to "Sing for Your Snack." Visit your local Pretzelmaker on National Pretzel Day, sing a snippet from a song of your choice and receive a FREE pretzel (with or without salt). Patrons who prefer not to sing won't go hungry - they can simply mention "National Pretzel Day" and receive their free snack."

Yeah! Can't wait!! Go get a free pretzel!

It's Been a While...

Hey all you festive followers out there!! I'm sorry its been over a week since we've had anything posted. That is going to change, I promise.

But I need your help.

I want to know what you want to hear.

You see, we are kinda in slump right now. A holiday slump. We are between major holidays and so I have a few ideas, but I want to know what you think.

Take a vote by leaving a comment on what you want to hear in the next little while.

-Themed party ideas
-Another Birthday week
-Hosting tips
-4th of July ideas (it's never too early, is it?)
-Mother's/Father's Day ideas
-anything else

I can't wait to hear from you and get the festive ball rolling!! As always, we would LOVE to hear your festive ideas! Send an email to sofestive@gmail.com.

The Engagement Cake

If there is one thing I've learned from Melissa, the brilliant and talented author-in-chief of this blog, it is that some things in life are just worth celebrating. She has also taught me that celebrations are better when you've put thought and love into some kind of a celebratory food.

My brother Jason got engaged on Saturday and was planning to stop in with his fiance to celebrate on Sunday night. I had been waiting for an excuse to make this decadent triple-chocolate mousse cake and the post-engagement visit was just the thing.

My love affair with this cake began on a Saturday afternoon episode of America's Test Kitchen on PBS. The episode's theme was "chocolate" and my channel surfing came to an abrupt end when they showed the triple layer chocolate cake they'd be making on the show. It was love at first sight. I could think of little else for days. But it required a spring form pan. And bittersweet bakers chocolate. And a couple of other things I didn't have in my kitchen.

It was clear this wasn't just some little cake fling. Making this cake was going to require all sorts of commitment-- taking my five month old to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy a cake pan, going to the grocery store on a case-lot-sale Saturday, and (not to mention) beating cream and egg whites for three distinct layers of chocolate mousse.

But true love makes you do things you wouldn't otherwise do. I somehow knew this cake was worth it. And Sunday night, I showed up to the engagement party with this metaphoric engagement cake on a silver platter.

Engagement is more than a cake fling itself and requires even more of a commitment than buying a spring form pan. Once the "will you..." and the "yes" and the ring are in place, you move forward, even if you are buying $15 worth of bakers chocolate and getting cold feet.

And so to you festive people out there, I'd like to introduce my metaphoric engagement cake. It was incredibly delicious, but gone in an instant. And interestingly enough, the whole wheat toast of being married with a baby tasted great the next morning.

I think I'll make this engagement cake again the next time there is an engagement party in my family (I should have enough time to recover, since the next eligible sibling is 17). You can find the recipe and instructions here, but you do have to register with America's Test Kitchen (it is free, they just want your name and email address).

Storing Easter Eggs

Is anyone else sad that Easter is over? I love all the bright spring colors that you get to decorate with. Anyways, one thing I don't like about Easter is storing all the Easter eggs. It seems like it takes up so much space. I guess you could just get new plastic ones each year, but I am too cheap to do that since they are still in great shape.

As I was putting away ours today, I was trying to think of way to store them that would minimize space. I came up with this:

I separated all the top pieces from the bottom pieces. In one ziploc bag, I stacked all the top pieces together. I stacked all the bottom pieces together in another bag. I sealed the bags up tight and viola...


2 very condensed bags of 24 Easter eggs.

They take up such little room in my holiday decor box now.

Happy Easter

Easter Picnic

A favorite tradition around Easter is our Easter picnic.

The Saturday before Easter we go on an Easter picnic. We have different picnic food each year- sometimes chicken or gourmet sandwiches.

The fun thing about this tradition is we do it no matter the weather. I recall one picnic that it was freezing outside. But we still loaded up the van with food and lots of blankets and headed to a park to have our Easter picnic.

One year it was raining/snowing, but we still had to have our Easter picnic. So we had it on our covered deck. That way we could be outside but not get drenched!

It's...

April Fool's Day!!

So go play a joke on someone!

If you missed some of the joke ideas we posted,
visit here or here