Happy New Year from Life of Lovely

As 2011 comes to a close, we'd like to hope that you've had a lovely year and to wish our readers a Happy New Year for 2012.

We'd also like to share some of our plans for the upcoming year in 2012 and some of our favorite posts from 2011.

If you aren't already following Life of Lovely on Twitter, you'll want to start following by January 1st.  Every day we'll be tweeting our favorite inspiration, thought-provoking, silly, or serious quotes.

Now, to some of the highlights of 2011 here at Life of Lovely.

The most popular post by far was Jennifer's tutorial on how to do hair inspired by Rihanna.  While our end product isn't quite as bold as Rihanna, it's still equally fun and probably a bit more wearable for the average person.

My favorite recipe that we've shared here this year is definitely the Blueberry White Chocolate Cupcakes.  Although these cupcakes take a little bit of time, the taste is more than worth the effort.  The season for fresh blueberries has passed, but if you happen to have any frozen blueberries, I would advise making these.  Then, you can share...or not.

Finally, I'd like to share my favorite of the book reviews.  While I've enjoyed every book I've reviewed for Life of Lovely in the past year, my favorite was Little Green Dresses.  I really liked to concept of re-using fabrics and making them into fun, fashionable things.  Although as I said in the review, I wouldn't make about half of the things in the book because they weren't my style, I'd still like to try the other 25!


Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from Life of Lovely!

Craft: Cinnamon Gingerbread Ornaments

While looking on pinterest, I found a great pin for making gingerbread ornaments from The Culinary Enthusiast.  Since we decided to change up our Christmas tree some this year, Jennifer and I made lots of these to decorate the tree.

The steps are very simple.  All that you need is 3/4 cups cinnamon, 3/4 cups unsweetened apple sauce, and 2 tablespoons glue.  Stop by The Culinary Enthusiast for more detailed directions.  

Here's what we did:

Mix

Roll out and cut out

Poke hole and let dry (several days)

Insert string and hang from tree

Since you have to wait several days, it may be a bit late to make these since Christmas is in seven days.  However, these would make nice Christmas presents as well, and if you made them soon, they would still have plenty of time to dry before Christmas.  Plus, the ornaments will make your house smell wonderful while they are drying.

Hope that you enjoyed this!  

Also, if you'd like to follow me (Elizabeth) on pinterest, you can here.

Baked Zucchini

During the holiday season, it can be difficult to find a balance between delicious and unhealthy when it comes to food.  One recipe that is both very flavorful, but still healthy, is one for baked zucchini which I found in Vegetarian and Vegetable Cooking.  I didn't know that I liked zucchini before I tried this recipe, but since pretty much everything is good when there is cheese involved, I decided to try it.  It's a bit early, but if one of your New Year's resolutions is to eat more vegetables, this would be a good start.  Also, I think it would be a good appetizer for a Christmas dinner especially if you cut each zucchini in half.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

4 zucchini

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 oz goat cheese

black pepper

salt  

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Cut 4 rectangles out of foil, one for each zucchini, and brush olive oil on each rectangle.

3. Make a thin slit along the middle of each zucchini, and place zucchini on the rectangle of foil.  You'll want to make sure that the slits are wide enough to accommodate the amount of cheese you plan to place in them.  

4. Place bits of goat cheese into the slits. (I used a lot in each!)  Sprinkle with olive oil, black pepper, and salt.

5. Wrap each piece of foil around a zucchini.  Put on a baking sheet, and bake for about 25 minutes.

DIY Eiffel Tower

I've been decorating my apartment which means that I've been using pinterest a lot to look for ideas.  One of the things I found on there that I love is this cut-out Eiffel Tower.  All you need is cardstock, tape, scissors, and a printer.  Mine is currently sitting on the mantle over the fireplace.

Template page one & Template page two
These templates are both from pilllpat's photostream on flickr.

Found via pinterest

Sugar Free Cake

Our answer to any kind of celebration is to bake cakes, cupcakes, cookies, or some similar sugary treat, but not everyone that we know is able to have sugar.  Sometimes it can be difficult to know what to bake for these people.  It just doesn't seem like a real birthday without cake, so our solution was to make a sugar free cake.  I'm sure that you can find recipes for sugar free cakes, but we decided to keep it simple and buy packaged cake mix from Pillsbury.

To make the cake even more fun, we added cookies around the cake's edges.  Hershey's makes sugar free chocolate chips, so we used the recipe on the back of the bag to make our cookies.  Although the cookies don't taste quite like normal chocolate chip cookies, they do make a close substitute.

I think in the future we'll try to make sugar free desserts from scratch instead of from cake mix, but it's nice to know that the mix does make good cakes if we are in a hurry.

Book Review - The Help



The summer is almost over, and I’ve only managed to read one of the books that I put on my list at the beginning of the summer.  If you're looking for suggestions for reading, you can still look at my summer reading list.  Of course, I read plenty of books that weren’t on the list, but the only one that I read from the list was The Help by Kathryn Stockett.    

I’d heard good things about the book for about a year before I read it.  Since it’s set in Jackson, Mississippi, and Kathryn Stockett is originally from there as well, I knew that I would have to read it eventually. 

I wasn’t certain what to expect when I first started reading the novel.  It’s a story told through the voices of three different women.  Two of them are black women who are working as help in homes of wealthier people, and the other is a white woman who is a part of this upper society. 

I think that the best parts of the book are the characters and the different voices that tell the story.  I can see why the book has become a bestseller, and I would definitely recommend reading it. 

There’s also a movie based on the book coming out on August 10th which I will be interested in watching.  I’m hoping this will be a case where the movie is as good as the book.  I do know that they filmed the movie in Mississippi, so I will be looking forward to seeing that part.

Enjoy your weekend!