Rosemary Spiced Nuts

These little nuggets of flavor are perfect for gifts or perfect for snacks at your holiday party! 20151222_183823

I am sitting here writing this looking at these nuts and wishing I hadn’t given them all away as gifts!!

Since cooking, trying new recipes, and posting about it is such a big part of my life, I love to be able to share some homemade food gift with my friends and family. In the past I’ve made THESE , THESE, THIS as well as flavored salts (including Sriracha, Rosemary, Lemon, Chili Lime, Porcini Mushroom, to name a few) for gifts in the past. They’re always a big hit because I think people really appreciate the time, energy and love that goes into homemade gifts!

This year while browsing Pinterest, I kept seeing so many recipes for different flavors of nuts. I’ve tried a few in the past but for some reason I was really digging the rosemary this year. They turned out great and the sugar in this recipe really helps create a great glaze that helps the little pieces of rosemary and salt stick so each nuts is packed with flavor.

Even if you’re gifts are already given and your parties are all over, you definitely should give these a try!
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It’s as simple as that. You can totally use any type of nuts that you like too. These are just what I had on hand.

I hope you all have a wonderful and very merry Christmas today! My plans for the rest of the day looks like it will contain yoga pants, a top knot, coffee, a nap or two, and enjoying the company of those I love most. In other words, the most perfect day ever.

xoxo

Cork Letter Craft

Sooo- I LOVE making homemade gifts for Christmas. Throughout the year I will save ideas for certain people and usually on December 20th I start working on them….. Kidding. Well sort of- my plan is usually to get started wayyyy earlier than I do.

This year one of the gifts I made for a friend was a cork letter of her new last name (she recently got married and decided to take her husbands last name) the idea came from something I saw on Etsy selling for about $100. Um no. And plus I could make that! Soo I did. And you totally can too.

Here is what you’ll need:

hot glue (duh- craft staple)
burlap or some fabric to wrap your letter
knife (be careful 🙂 )
corks , the real wine corks made from you know, cork. Not the plastic ones.

Here is how to do it:
I went to Michaels (but any craft store has these) and bought a wood letter, in this case a ‘C’ . It was really inexpensive, I’m talking like $4, PLUS those places always have coupons.

I basically just wrapped the letter in burlap- my thought with this was that the hot glue and corks would stick better to the burlap than the plain letter and my letter was white instead of a wood color and I was going for more of a natural look- anyway, uses some hot glue and wrap the letter. It doesn’t have to be perfect because you’re covering it.

Then I honestly just cut up corks in a random fashion in tons of different shapes and glued them on! I tried to get them pretty tight to one another and overlapped a lot. Um seriously that’s it! It turned out perfect. I was soo proud of it. Haha. I am totally going to make more.

I feel like I should share that somehow my family came into a trillion corks. So no I’m not boozing on wine every day to save up- though I do have my own little collection started, if only boxed wine had corks, then I’d have a lot 🙂 hahaha- my dad probably isn’t too thrilled about that comment 😉 anyway I am fortunate enough to be able to have TONS of corks at my disposal. Someone we know had asked a restaurant to save them and then realized they didn’t have anything to do with them so they passed them to us. No complaints here!