Thanksgiving Traditions

This title should really be "Thanksgiving Traditions, But Really This Year Things Are Weird Because It's Thanksgivikkuh Which Won't Happen Again For Another Billion Years And So We Have To Combine As Much Turkey And Jewishness Into This One Night As We Can."

Anyone still here or it took too long to read the title and you got ADD and went away? I totally understand. 

So it's the day before Thanksgiving and I am so excited to start some new traditions with the kiddies tomorrow. We have a few family traditions that we do throughout the year, but last week I decided it was sad that we don't have one for Thanksgiving. Even though we always have a big (both food wise, and the number of extended family wise) Thanksgiving dinner every year, I wanted to institute a little something we can look forward to doing every year with just our little family.  

Tomorrow morning I will be making pumpkin french toast (recipe here) and we will drink hot chocolate while watching the parade. There you go. Nice and easy little tradition. Minimal effort and some cute little memories for us. 

{This is where I was going to insert a hot chocolate related ecard, but they are all too risqué for this little sparkly blog of mine... who knew hot chocolate was so naughty?)

Anyway, I will be spending the afternoon cooking my contribution to my family's Thanksgiving dinner. This whole Thanksgivikkuh phenomenon has me combining a Chanukah favorite, latkes, with my favorite part of Thanksgiving (and fall in general), pumpkin. So I'll be making pumpkin potato latkes (recipe here). It sounds kind of weird at first but I decided how could it be bad? I'm sure my little sous chef will want to help out in the kitchen tomorrow. 

After dinner is over and we all have too much of that sleepy turkey chemical in us, Thanksgiving will be over for me. I don't participate in any Black Friday craziness because I don't have the patience for it. And since Chanukah starts tonight I already shopped for everyone. It's so strange to have our whole holiday season on the same day. 

Happy Chanukah and Happy Thanksgiving to my lovely readers!

The Yellow Brick Road of Leaves

Look what we found:

After last week's super cold weather, (did it snow or did I imagine that?) we all thought fall had left us for good. And it was a tough breakup. But then we woke up to this and some little people I know were really happy about it.

Thanksgiving is coming!! Who's excited? What are your plans? 

Target Taxidermy

This post sounds pretty weird but I promise it's not a hunting lesson. I'm scared of all animals and am the opposite of outdoorsy. And I'm from Long Island... We don't hunt. We shop.

Taxidermy, or rather fake taxidermy has been something I've really gotten into recently. A deer head on the wall sounds the opposite of chic, but when it's white with gold antlers? Please, I am sold.

Look how gorg this room is! That cute little deer is totally calling my name and we could be friends. 

My decorating bestie made one for herself and he's hanging in her dining room: 

Jealous of the deer and the fireplace. 

Off topic for a second here, but I've already discussed my Instagram addiction. The problem is that addiction feeds into another, because I follow @targetdoesitagain. This account is done by two girls who post pictures of the amazing new things target has on their shelves. I see it, I want to buy it all, and basically Instagram is dangerous. Yesterday they posted this picture:

Target you kill me!!! The second I saw that little deer above I wanted him. I know my husband is reading this right now and thinking I am craycray, but look at him is he not the chicest deer you have ever seen? And I was at target yesterday. But I promise I was inside for five minutes only, because I was there to return something and not shop, but I wanted to go find that little guy and bring him home with me.

After I got home I went to look it up on the website and realized the deer head is not for hanging on the wall, it's tabletop decor. Ok fine, I'm moving my crush on to the horns hanging right next to him. 

So pretty I want to pet them. 

Here are some other deer heads I love:

The colors are all spectacular.

This cutie is knitted! I am so sold.

So what is your take on this wall decor? Do you find it totally crazy or on my tres chic deer team? Do you have real taxidermy on your walls? Please say no, I'd be really scared otherwise.

DIY Instagram Magnets

Hi my name is Goldie, and I am an Instagram addict.

Instagram really feeds into my taking too many pictures problem. But I have it, I'm hooked, and I'm probably not stopping anytime soon. 

You know me, I like actually printing pictures. The square shape on an Instagram wouldn't fit into a standard album but then I found out about stickygram and I really wanted to order some. Stickygram is a company that takes your Instagram pictures and turns them into magnets. I love the idea of wallpapering my fridge with my instagrams (have you seen Taza's? It's ahhmazing) but I realized it was going to get really expensive really quickly. They charge $15 for 9 pictures, so if you print a bunch it gets out of hand. And I of course, wanted to use a lot of pictures.

So I decided to make my own!

This past Saturday was absolutely gorgeous and then with the combination of changing the clock and a cold front, my fabulous fall came to an abrupt halt, and it was officially winter. Lily didn't get the memo about sleeping late after the clock was changed and was ready to party at 6 am. Looking on the bright side, I had an extra hour that morning  to work on my super simple DIY Instagram magnets.

The first thing you need to do is print your pictures. There are a lot of ways to do this, and there are websites dedicated to printing your Instagram pictures. I wanted to do mine as cheap as possible. Using picmonkey.com, which is a free photo editing site, I made a collage with 6 instagrams each on a 4x6 picture. When you're on Instagram, the size of the picture is 2 inches by 2 inches. By having 6 instagrams on a 4x6 picture, you end up with printed Instagram pictures with the same dimensions as on your phone. Snapfish was having a penny prints promotion and I ordered 13 pictures. Because each picture had 6 instagrams on it, I ended up getting 78 instagrams for 13 cents. Not bad right?

Here are some of the 4x6s. You can see on the bottom right that I repeated two pictures. I did this so I can give some of these magnets to other people too. 

The above is a cut out Instagram placed on my phone and it really is the same size! I loved how these came out printed. After you have your printed pictures, glue the entire 4x6 onto a sheet of magnet paper. I used mod podge as the glue and it stayed really well. I got a pack of magnet paper in Staples. The package had 4 sheets in it and it was about $10.

After everything is dry, cut out each Instagram picture. The best way to do this is probably with a cutting board as an x acto knife but life is not perfect, and neither am I, so I just cut with regular scissors. 

Here's my stack of cut magnet pictures. At this point you can call it a day, and hang your magnets up if you want. You can also go one step further to give the magnets a little more ooh lala. I'll let you decide what you want to do, I kept going. See that bottle in the picture? It's mod podge dimensional magic and let me tell you it is magic. Like Disney princess magical. It basically adds an extra layer of dimension that makes the magnets look a little more professional. It's really simple to use. Draw a thin line around your magnet with it, and then fill in the middle. It's like decorating cookies with royal icing, just way easier. If bubbles form, pop them with a pin, or even just your finger (like I said, I'm not perfect). You need to let it dry for 24 hours and then you're done! 

I haven't finished all of the pictures I have yet, but my fridge is slowly getting filled up and I love it! I used three bottles of the mod podge dimensional magic which was about $5 each. The magnets were $10 and the pictures were 13 cents. So I spent about $25.13 on 78 Instagram magnets. If I would have ordered that many magnets from stickygram it would have cost $130... DIY for the win!

Any other Instagram addicts here? Do we need a support group? 12 steps or something? Do you display your Instagram pictures at home in a creative way? Let me know below!

Exploring 5 Pointz

So today we hung out here:

New York City has been in an uproar over the British graffiti artist, Banksy, being here. Building owners have hired security guards to make sure his art is not vandalized. He sold original art on the street yesterday for $60 apiece and it's worth is now being estimated at over $30,000. Graffiti has been on the mind lately. Instead of stalking out Banksy, Daniel, Lily, and I took a little trip out to Long Island City to see some other famous graffiti art.

5 Pointz is a factory building where some of the world's best graffiti artists came and left their mark. Seeing their intricate work, especially after my own spray painting disaster of last week, was insanely inspiring. The graffiti is art that is larger than life. These people are crazy talented and 5 Pointz is a place where you view it as art, and not just a blemish on a building.

The sidewalks were also sprayed.

I know this is not the kind of thing everyone finds interesting, but we had a great time walking around. 5 Pointz is scheduled to be torn down soon and condos will be put in its place, so I'm glad we made the trip.

Lily was fascinated by the art, and I may have given her a little lecture about not using her crayons on the walls when we get home. I'm all for art, but I'll let her hone her skills on paper instead.

There was a small photo shoot happening while we were there. Lily apparently took some posing tips from the models:

Has anyone else been here? 

I'll be back tomorrow with a super easy project (no spray paint involved!) It's the perfect project for any Instagram addicts like myself.