The Very 80s Murder Mystery High School Reunion party was set in the imaginary Babcock High in New York City, at the birthday girl's request.  Obviously this was an excellent excuse to try making homemade pretzels.  

Here's a quick and easy tip for organizing your Christmas lights so they won't turn into a tangled mess, and will be easy to use next year.

Tutorial for making a homemade pinata that looks like a disco ball.

A couple months ago (yes, I got sidetracked with all the holiday stuff), my friend's daughter decided that she wanted to have an 80s themed murder mystery for her birthday party, and asked if I could help plan the event.  Um, yes please!  

Want to know the best way to store cookie cutters?   This simple cookie cutter storage method keeps them organized, easy to find, and dust-free.  

We always invite our neighbors over for pizza on New Year's Eve.  Any excuse to fire up the wood-fired pizza oven I built is a good one, of course.  And we like to stay home on New Year's Eve, we liked to include our kids in the festivities, and we really like our neighbors.  

I think the Mayans got it slightly wrong.  No, the world didn't end this week, but I did get buried in an avalanche of gingerbread.  I'm renaming Operation Gingerbread this year Gingerbread-agemmon.

Bacon is baked with brown sugar and pepper to create the most amazingly delicious, perfectly crisp bacon with a sweet and slightly spicy candy-like coating.

This easy recipe for pecan sticky buns is just like the one grandma used to make.  It combines frozen rolls, butterscotch pudding, butter, and brown sugar to make the most amazingly delicious sticky caramel coating for this pull apart bread.  Prep in the evening and bake it in the morning for an easy Christmas breakfast.

December seems to get busier every year!  And what a time for my computer to need repair work, like it did yesterday.  (Noooo!  I have photos to edit, blog posts to write!)  Happily, it didn't turn out to be the CPU fan or video card, like we initially thought.  The computer just needed a really good cleaning out.  My husband said it looked like an archaeological dig in there.  Happily, Staples is ovvering their basic computer service for free right now (usually $69), so my computer got fixed for free!  Yay!   And the same day, too.  Whew.  Back in service.