… and the silence shall be broken …

The blog has been rather quiet as of late while I’ve been collecting, organizing, and publishing some super sweet and totally free downloadable goodness for you! Hope you like ’em! Happy Holidays!

Thanks to the fabulous ladies over at Buttoned Up! (and their beautiful new forms!), you can easily put together a wallet-friendly gift-giving budget that’ll keep you smiling into the new year!

Holiday Gifts (1127 downloads)   Holiday Gift Budget (1214 downloads)   Holiday Budget (1243 downloads)

BTW : For those of you too impatient to wait for future posts, you can find the rest of these handy-dandy holiday tools on the downloads page in the resources section of this website.

Stumbled upon some really handy thanksgiving tips at abigslice.com to help you prepare both your home and your turkey for the holidays…

A Big Slice is the enjoyment of life and finding new ways to enrich each moment.

It’s a new take on the old phrase, “grab a big slice of life.” Clare Aslaksen and Ted Field share a love of family and friends but noticed, as the years went by, that “special connection” began to lose it’s defining character. So, how do you recapture these essential components of your life? Clare and Ted believe one way is by enriching your life through entertaining.

By opening your home and your kitchen, you open your heart. Hosting can become a potion for the soul, and a great memory can be as simple as sharing a glass of wine. Throughout the themed sections of their website, Clare and Ted serve as helping hands that gently guide the nervous host toward the perfect evening.

“Life’s A Banquet… why not grab A Big Slice?”

Will you be hosting your first Thanksgiving Dinner? Or, will you be entertaining a few less or a few more guests than usual? Maybe you need some help planning a more traditional or an alternatively unique Thanksgiving Day menu? No matter your challenge, you must check out this totally cool tool over at bonappetit.com…!!

* * * Update: Stephanie’s store is now Family Traditions! * * *

Like it or not, Thanksgiving is right around the corner!

My dear friend, Stephanie, owner of Dream Dinners in Lexington (Kentucky) is offering a great deal on a fabulous Thanksgiving spread—enough turkey and side dishes to feed 12 to 15 people! So, if you’re anything like me and prefer not to spend hours toiling away in the kitchen, you should definitely give Stephanie a call… she’ll “hook you up”!

If, on the other hand, you actually enjoy spending time in the kitchen preparing a traditional Thanksgiving feast for extended family and friends, you’ll find these tools helpful—Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving Planner (5008 downloads) and Real Simple’s Thanksgiving Dinner Invitation (6756 downloads) .

Welcome to my blog’s new series… I will be featuring (and maybe even reviewing) some of my absolute favorite organizing tools and products on Fridays! Here’s the first…

TasteBook.com is the best place online to discover, organize, and share favorite recipes—then turn them into beautiful personal keepsake-quality hardcover cookbooks.

You can search more than 100,000 recipes from major lifestyle magazines and leading recipe websites, upload your own favorites, or shop professionally edited TasteBooks created by top cookbook authors and food editors.

TasteBook.com is free to use, and personal cookbooks start at just $19.95 each. Every TasteBook can hold up to 100 recipes. Order them all at once or in batches. It’s easy to add more pages to TasteBook’s expandable hardcover binder system at anytime.

• Custom covers: Choose a beautiful cover image and edit the title of your cookbook.
• Cooking notes: Add helpful hints, cooking tips, and personal notes to any recipe.
• Personal photos: Upload your own pictures along with your personal recipes.
• Colored tabs: Organize your recipes any way you want with ten tabbed chapters.
• Perfect gift: Create one for bridal showers, family reunions, and holidays.

So, fill a TasteBook with all your family’s favorites, and you’ll soon discover just how “easy-breezy” it’ll be to get dinner on the table every night of the week (now that your recipes are finally organized)! Mmmmmm…