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Hello everyone! I’m back! Don’t worry – I didn’t forget about you. I took a break from blogging (longer than I’d like to admit) as life things started to pile up. Things happened while I was away! We moved – again! I know, every time we move somewhere I tell myself “we will be here for a good chunk of time.” But then something happens that steers us in a different direction, and we’re buying more moving boxes.

This time, we stayed in the same state (NJ) but moved a bit more North because I got a new job! And this job happens to be in New York City! I have to admit I never would have thought I’d work in NYC, but now I’m one of those Jersey commuters with a drawer full of shoes at my office so I can wear my sneakers during my commute. The job is wonderful, and a big transition from what I was doing previously. One of my favorite things about the job (besides a kick ass team of people I work with) is the company deals with food! So I get to think and talk about food for my job! I can’t use enough exclamation points! I’m really lucky to have found such a great opportunity to transition from working at various universities to a field that I hadn’t dipped my toes in yet.

J and I have had a lot of amazing adventures since my last post. We’ve traveled a lot, cooked a lot, explored our new town, and had some great dance parties at quite a few weddings. I’ll be sharing some of these adventures by doing some catch up with a few back-in-time “Month Through My Lens” posts soon.

Due to my new job (and commute), I have less time to spend in the kitchen. While I may not post as frequently as I had previously, my goal is to keep the time in between posts much shorter. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this NYC rooftop shot.

We are now in full swing of the holiday season. This means long lines at the post office, spending way too much time online shopping, food blogs are full of sweet recipes, and instead of working all I want to do is bake. However this is not a food post. Instead I thought I would share with you some of my holiday decorations ideas that are simple and add a bit of sparkle.

If you are traveling for the holidays like we are, it may seem like kind of a waste to get a whole christmas tree to then leave it for a week. Coming home to a dead tree kind of kills the holiday spirit. However, I can’t imagine the holidays without the house smelling of pine. So instead I pick up some evergreen branches which are available at most grocery stores or tree lots. I arrange them in different sized vases and place them all around the house.

For the larger branches, you can even hang a few ornaments for a makeshift tree. This is also helpful if you have a small apartment and don’t have room for a tree. Flat ornaments work well hanging off of vases.

Just because you don’t have a big tree doesn’t mean your ornaments won’t go to waste. I take similar colored ornaments and place them in glass vases, bowls, or mason jars. For my mantle, I stuck with silver and gold ornaments.

I also had this string of globe lights made out of thin wicker strips. I bunched them all together and placed them in a serving dish. I love the light it throws on the wall. You can also do this with regular string lights or small twinkly lights because you can never have too much twinkle during the holidays.