This is the Chex mix recipe my mom has always made. It smells soooo good baking in the oven, and it’s the perfect savory snack to offset all the sugary treats around the holidays!

4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ teaspoons seasoning salt
¾ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
6 cups Crispix cereal
1 cup mixed nuts
1 cup pretzels

Heat oven to 250 degrees. Melt butter in large roasting pan in oven. Stir in seasonings and make sure the butter mixture is spread evenly over the bottom of the pan. Gradually stir in remaining ingredients until evenly coated. Bake 1 hour. Stir every 15 minutes. Spread on paper towels to cool. Store in an airtight container.

Tonight I’m hosting a girls’ night for a bunch of friends. I’m making a few of my favorite fall recipes including this spiced cider, these gingersnap cookies, and my mom’s homemade chex mix. I’m trying out this caramel-in-a-can recipe to pair with apple slices, and I can’t forget a veggie tray to balance out all the sugar!

We’re also going to make this cutesy fall leaf DIY project.

Later we’ll roast marshmallows and make s’mores around the fire pit. Now if only our leaves would start changing in the next few hours!

I love fall!

I’ve been finding loads of great stuff on Etsy recently. Which of these is your favorite? I’ll take one of each please! I’m pretty sure my little dog, Mabel, would fit in the onesie. I’m not normally one for dog clothes, but that elephant is almost too cute to pass up. I’d just have to cut out a tail hole.

1 Don’t Grow Up Print
2 Leif Pillow Cover
3 Circus Elephant on a Ball Onesie
4 Gold Butterflies
5 Identical Print
6 Chalk Pencils
7 Buckyball Carbon Sphere Embroidery Hoop Art
8 Vintage Herb Collection
9 PolyGlobe Pendant Light

Mission accomplished, I painted each of my fingernails a different color! It took my entire nail polish collection to do it. All my polishes are variations of gold and purple, so luckily they ended up looking great together. But what does the fact that I keep buying the same nail polish colors over and over without realizing it say about me as a person?!

(This last shot was begging to have a color palette pulled out of it!)

Lately we’ve had a lot of rain around here, and all sorts of wild looking mushrooms have been popping up. Since one of my terrariums recently suffered a casualty, I decided to make some little mushrooms to fill the void.

Supplies:

oven bake-able polymer clay
sturdy wire cut into 3″–4″ lengths (make sure it isn’t the plastic-coated kind)
appropriate baking dish (according to package instructions)
an oven
masking tape
gold spray paint

Directions:

1. Roll grape-sized lumps of clay into snakes of various lengths. Concentrate the rolling on one end, so you end up with one skinny end and one bulgy end.

2. Shape each bulgy end into a mushroom cap with your fingertips.

3. Slowly and carefully feed a piece of wire up through the stem of the mushroom and into the cap. Make sure the wire doesn’t poke out the top. Leave the excess wire sticking out the bottom of the stem. The wire will anchor your mushroom in the soil, and make the skinny stem a little more sturdy.

4. Lay the mushrooms in your baking dish, and bake them according to the package instructions. Let the mushrooms cool completely.

5. Tape off the mushroom stems, leaving the caps exposed. Spray paint the caps gold. I painted a few mushrooms completely gold too, just for a little variety.

DIY Bonus: Gold flecked fingernails!

6. Plant the mushrooms in your terrarium! I think the mushrooms look best clustered together, since that is how real mushrooms grow.

Guaranteed not to die—even if you forget to water them. ;)

Yesterday I got to wear boots for the first time this season! I love fall. I love seeing my breath in the cold, crunching through freshly fallen leaves, drinking apple cider, making stew, and I especially love boots. I’m swooning over this pair in particular. If it’s autumn where you are, don’t forget to savor it!

1 nobility houndstooth scarf from Ruche
2 chambray shirt from J.Crew
3 black skinny jeans from Old Navy
4 saddle brown waxed canvas messenger bag from Infusion
5 parallel bars sterling silver ring from SD Marie Jewelry
6 matisse toymaker lace-up boot from DSW

They’re here!

I usually focus on all things visual, but smells can be intriguing too. Did you ever catch a whiff of something that jerked you back into a long lost memory for a moment? It’s such an eerie feeling! For example, I only visited my great grandmother a handful of times growing up, but she always wore the same perfume. My mom has a bottle of it on her dresser. Great Grandma Wanda passed away years ago, but whenever I smell her perfume it’s like she’s standing there next to me. I want to have a signature scent like that, so when I’m gone I can haunt my family through a perfume bottle! (Is that too morbid?)

I saved up a bunch of perfume samples and tried one a day for a while. Most of them gave me a headache, and others smelled great at first but awful after being on my skin for a while. Chloé Eau de Parfum was the clear choice for me. It’s a bit too flowery when I first spray it on, but after an hour or so it blends nicely with my natural scent. (When your husband can’t stop sniffing your neck, you know you found a winner!) I make a point to spritz it on every morning. I have a mental picture of old, crotchety Daniel smelling my perfume bottle and reminiscing after I’m gone. Yes, I realize I’m a weirdo for thinking about things like that.

Do you have a signature scent or a favorite smell memory?

While tidying up my hard drive I found a folder containing the photos from our home’s real estate listing back in 2008 when we purchased it. It’s so weird to see someone else’s stuff in our home! I got a kick out of comparing the previous owners’ old photos to more recent ones that I took. The house looks so different now! I thought you guys might enjoy seeing a few of these shots side by side too.

Now…

& Then

Now & Then

Now…

& Then

Today I refilled my chalkboard tea jars (DIY here) with new teas for the coming cooler months. I love hot tea, especially chai. In spite of growing up in the south I’ve never been a fan of iced sweet tea. People here think I’m weird!

I usually get Stash teas, but I thought I’d try DavidsTea for a change. I ended up with Saigon Chai, Honeybush Lemon Ginger, Jessie’s Tea, and Coco Chai Rooibos. How pretty are they?!

So far I’ve tried and loved two rooibos-based teas—Jessie’s Tea (which smells so delicious that I wish I could get it in candle form) and the Coco Chai (the best chai I’ve ever had). I can’t wait to taste the others! I think rooibos teas are my favorite. They are caffeine free and don’t have the slightly bitter aftertaste that black and green teas can have.

Do you have a favorite tea?