How to Throw a Winter Party | Yummy Bites

This week I've been sharing how I put together a "Cozy Winter Social". It was a perfectly fun way to distract myself while my husband was out of town. If you want to see the other stages of putting the party together, check out my posts from the rest of this week!

For my awesome winter party, I wanted to keep the food nice and white without going overboard on sweets (which is surprisingly hard to do with parties). Even more than the food itself, I wanted to presentation to be simple and sweet.

To set up the h'orderves, I pushed the long side of my kitchen table against a wall and draped it with a white lacy tablecloth. (I'll talk about the non-food-related decorations in another post, so you'll have to wait for those!) I used only glass or white ceramics to hold my food, and I used round dishes to give a cohesive feel to the various dishes. My Main Man thought it would be funny to buy me a can of spray snow for one of my stocking stuffers this Christmas. Well I showed him and used it to frost the edges of my glass dishes! I also layered my dishes to give the whole set-up lots of dimension. I wanted to present all of the food in small portions, so I created simple paper cones to hold the popcorn with my favorite masking paper cut into 7"x7" squares. 

My really awesome friends, Beautiful Brunette and my Colorado Home-Girl (yes, you two just got nicknames) were sweet enough to bring dishes to share. Beautiful Brunette brought potato chips with dip and my Colorado Home-Girl brought chocolately marshmallows. They even both brought perfectly matching dishes to boot! The dishes I prepared were kettlecorn popcorn, egg salad sandwiches (quartered), veggies with ranch dressing, and some pretty awesome cupcakes. Here's time for a little confession: my cupcake batter was out-of-the-box funfetti with pre-made cream cheese frosting and store-bought silver sprinkles. But you know what? With a little artistic frosting application and some cute toothpick flags, they were still awesome! 

To keep my ladies hydrated, I filled two carafes. One had water spiced up with cucumber and lemon slices. The other carafe had lemonade (yep, it was the powdered kind that you simply add water to) that I accentuated with lemon slices and some muddled mint leaves. To my happy surprise, the lovely Winter, a fellow blogger over at The Redd Party, brought some sparkling grape juice to give a little excitement to our drinks (she is also responsible for a number of pictures in this week's posts, so give her lots of love)! 

(Above) Daytime vs. (Below) During the party with candlelight

I love food and I think it is a great social lubricant, so I was so excited to plan the menu for this shindig. What other bites do you find particularly awesome for parties? 

Thankful Thursday | Delicious Food

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I kind of hope you aren't reading this post on Thanksgiving, but I also can understand needing a quick escape from rowdy football fans, loud family teasing, or smoking kitchens. I've been to all of those places. Either way, I won't be posting at all tomorrow, so hopefully this holds you over until Monday!

You had to know it was coming--today is all about how thankful I am for food! I really love food- it's quite amazing any day, and holiday food has always been a special way to bring my family together. I've lived away from home for four years now, but I've been able to visit for at least one holiday each year, so my mom has kindly saved all of her best foods for my visits. This is the first year I'm doing both Christmas and Thanksgiving away from my family (of course I'm very excited for my first Christmas with My Main Man and his family), which makes me especially thankful for the special food my mom makes for the holidays.

Here are some of my favorite traditional holiday foods in my family.

Twice-Baked Potatoes, Shrimp and Cocktail Sauce, Green Bean Casserold, Baby Quiche, Rhodes Rolls, Eggnog with Nutmeg, Stuffed Mushroom Caps, Sweet Potato Pie, Pumpkin Pie

Wipe that drool off your chin and get back to your family--you only get this quality time once a year, right?

Food Mood | Wife or Something Like It Guest Blog

Hey fun people! I have a lot of friends who have awesome blogs (particularly about things I'm not so awesome at, like food) and I want to showcase them every once in a while. I don't think that art is limited to a pen and paper, so I've asked these cool bloggers to talk about how art plays a role in their blogs.

I've known my wonderful friend Erika, writer and chef of Wife or Something Like It, for about ten years, and she is so cute and fun! She's been a really great friend to my brother and I grew up hanging out with her brother, so it's a cool little circle of life. Make sure to check out her blog ASAP, but be sure a grab a tissue for all the drool her yummy food will cause!

Hi everyone! I'm so excited to be a guest here today. Isn't MissE's blog fun? I love all the interesting and creative things she finds, especially when she posts architecture because that's something I've never really looked at, and it's awesome! My blog, Wife or Something Like It, is mostly a collection of recipes, some original, some adaptations, and some ramblings about my life and adventures of me and my adorable husband. Go check it out!


Today I want to talk to you guys about food photography. Food photography is really it's own art form. It's a lot easier to get a good picture of a sunset than it is to get an awesome picture of a cupcake that makes it look appetizing.

The art of food photography is something I'm still learning, but I want to share a few things I've picked up on.

Rule #1 of food photography is never use the flash on your camera. It's too bright, and it will wash out the food. I learned that on my DSLR, you can turn down the flash so that it's not as bright. This is kind of a last resort, for only if you have really bad lighting.

The best way to avoid having to use your flash is to take your photos at a time of day when the lighting is the best. This would be early in the morning, or at sunset, because the light isn't so bright and direct.

The other important elements of food photography are:
Composition-making sure that the photo is arranged well
White Balance-often taking pictures inside will give your photos an orange-ish tint, so you can either adjust the white balance on your camera, or use natural light
Focus-food most often looks best with a shallow depth of field, meaning only the foreground is in focus Lighting-make sure the photo is not underexposed or overexposed

Here's some really great examples of food photography:

(Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer from Mel's Kitchen)

I love that this one is kind of an "action" shot. The composition of this one is nice as well. You'll also notice that the creamer being poured is the most in-focus part of the photo. 

(Girly Girl Cupcakes from The Best of this Life)

I love that in this photo you can see the process. It shows the bare cupcakes, but then you see the frosting, sprinkles, and cupcake papers, and then also the completed cupcakes. 

(source unknown)

First off, I think these are the CUTEST popsicles in the whole world. This photo is a really good example of depth of field. You can see that the background is blurry, so the focus is on the popsicle in the foreground. 

(Pumpkin cupcake w/Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting from My Sweet & Saucy)

This has the same effect as above, with the blurred background. Right away, your eye is drawn to the cupcake with the most focus. I love this one because of the composition as well. The amount of frosting on the cupcake is horrendous, but it looks great! And the caramel adds a nice touch as well. 

Well there you have it! I hope you guys learned something today about food photography.  One of the great things about it is that the more you do it, the better you get!

Thanks for having me!

I really wish I had an awesome camera to get my photography groove on right about now. Hopefully you learned lots of helpful tips from Erika; I certainly did! Take a look at her blog and try out some of her tasty recipes. See you all Friday when I showcase my simple fall decorations!