NYC Holiday Window Survey

On Christmas Eve my husband and I went to a midnight mass and then walked the streets of New York, checking out the many holiday window displays and the tree at Rockerfeller Center.

The NYC Holiday Window Survey is a great collection of photos of the best of the best New York City Holiday Window displays. If you didn't get a chance to visit the city this holiday this article is a great place to check out the best of the best.

What's your favorite window display? I loved the Anthropology car stuck in the snow, especially considering the city just got pounded with snow last week.

Holiday Wishes from the Feld's!

To all my friends, family, clients, tweeps and fans! I hope you have as enjoyable a holiday as I do.

Below is a sample of the holiday cards my husband and I sent out to our friends and family this holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

5 Tips to Survive Holiday Parties

Photo Credit: Mrs. W's Kitchen

It's the last week most of us are attending Holiday Parties (myself included). How does one survive the many parties of the season? All the food, cocktails and treats make it difficult to not weigh an additional 10 pounds come New Years and make diet and exercise a mandatory New Year's Resolution.

I decided to do some digging and came across some tips by the Examiner to enjoy the parties of the season and not pay for it later.

5 Tips to Survive Holiday Parties

Enjoy!

Website Love: Wishpot

First, I want to disclose this is a non-paid endorsement of a website I spent some time on this past weekend that I now LOVE!

For those of you who follow and chat with me on Twitter, you may know that I never, ever step into a store during the holiday season. I always do my shopping online. Do I have to pay shipping? Of course! But to me it's a small premium to pay to not have to endure the madness of holiday season shopping in NYC.

So over the years I've come up with several systems where I create lists of gifts ideas for my friends and family, and then go about finding them on the Internet. Usually I'd have to keep some sort of a computer based document where I could then copy and paste the links of everything I've found into. While this system was all well and good, it was a bit too manual for my tastes.

So a friend of mine over the past week or so had set up an Amazon Wishlist account to create a donation item list to send school supplies to the Nuevos Caminos Special Needs School in Ecuador, where she's volunteered before. When I looked at her site to donate myself, it reminded me of several tweets I've seen from @wishpot on Twitter about their service, www.wishpot.com, which is very similar. So I decided to check it out and am glad i did.

Basically Wishpot allows you to set up an account, and then to make "wishlists" using items you find anywhere on the Internet. This would work great for brides who don't want to register at traditional department stores. They even have a browser tool button you can install that let's you add an item to your account from an external website by the click of a button.

The feature I was most surprised by is they also have a section where you can store gift ideas you find for your friends and family and you can keep the list private. Score! I now had my easy, more instant solution for my online holiday shopping!

While on the site, I also made sure to make my own "wishlist" of items I'd like that I would never buy for myself. This way I can forward it to my husband, friends and family to give them a few ideas of stuff I'd appreciate this holiday season. Of course I wouldn't send it to anyone unless they asked me if there was anything in particular I'd like (though this is common in my family so at least I'm prepared).

Do you have a special technique you use to make your holiday shopping experience less stressful? Do share!

Top 5 Holiday Greeting Card Etiquette Tips

photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hannah8ball/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

'Tis the season to send out holiday cards to your loved ones! With so many different holiday and greeting card products on the market today, don't forget to consider the following five items when getting yours together.

What We're Bringing for Thanksgiving

My husband and I this year are visiting his mother in Philadelphia for Thanksgiving. Being my family is based out of New York and I see them all the time, I especially love being able to visit my husband's family when we can for the holidays since he doesn't often get to see them. Also since Philly isn't a very long drive from Brooklyn, only about 2 hours, it makes for a nice long weekend vacation.

Last year we visited my mother-in-law as well, and I cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner (my first!). This year we decided to split up the work a bit and instead my mother-in-law is handling the turkey, and my husband and I handling all the side dishes.

I really want to avoid having to cook anything the day of, being we all know there's only room for one cook in any kitchen. So my goal is to create my menu around all make-in-advance recipes that can all be warmed up in an oven at the same temperature. Also, I want everything to be relatively healthy as well as delicious.

All the below receipes are currently in the running. Not sure which we'll bring but they all look delicious!

Traditional Sweet Potato Casserole via Cooking Light

Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes via Cooking Light

Zesty Broccoli Casserole via Cooking Light

Sourdough Stuffing with Pears and Sausage via Cooking Light

Are you currently hosting Thanksgiving? What are you making this year? I love to share good recipes so feel free to send some my way!

Spooky-Elegant Halloween Party Invites

One of my best friends decided to throw a Halloween Party at the Norwood Club in New York City, and contacted me to create her invitations for her. One thing that excited me designing these is it was one of the first parties besides my own wedding that I'd actually get to attend the party I'm designing the invitations for. Yay!

Mariana has a fantastic sense of style, especially when it comes to fashion. So it was really important to me to create invitations that I felt suited and reflected her and her sense of style as well as the venue (which is pretty ritzy). Also being they were for a Halloween party, I wanted to be sure they were still sort of quirky and spooky at the time. My favorite elements of these invitations was the torn edge black backer and the great handwritten script font used to highlight the important details.

What were you for Halloween? I love hearing people's creative Halloween costume ideas, so be sure to leave a comment!

Halloween Wedding Inspiration Board

Happy Halloween!

While everyone gets ready go head out to Halloween parties this weekend, I'm sure there are lots of brides out there tying the knot this weekend as well. How fun would it be to plan a Halloween masquarade inspired wedding? Orange, blacks, golds and yellows would make for a beautiful fall wedding palette. A candy bar for the guests of this event would be essential!

What do you think?