The Musings of a Working Mom

So every year I like to surprise my vegetarian husband and parents with a "special" meatless dish for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And every year I search and search and search through all of my cookbooks and online for the perfect "entertaining" meatless main dish.  Well this year I decided to try a savory bread pudding, especially since I just happen to have a pound of parsnips in the refrigerator.  This is a delicious recipe that I found on the Martha Stewart site and it was a cinch to prepare.  I love that you can make this dish up to a day ahead and it tastes just like you made it that day!  This is the perfect dish to entertain with and everyone, even meat eaters will like this dish.  This dish can be used as a main dish for your non-meat eating friends or as a side dish for your meat-eating friends.  Either way, this is a great dish to entertain with!  And another plus, this savory bread pudding tastes even better the next day! ...

We are at the end of the year with 2012 almost behind us and 2013 right around the corner.  'Tis the season for gifting...and receiving.  This month's Birchbox theme is all about looking and feeling your best this holiday season.  Even the usually plain brown box that contains all of the awesome samples is dressed up and looking fancy for this month. Here are the samples included in this month's Birchbox: 1.   Cartier:  Baiser Vole de Parfume (full size, $100) - Make room on your vanity for this award-winning scent, a single-note composition of pure lily. 2.   Frownies:  Eye Gels (full size, $29.95) - Fight puffy dark circles with these innovative undereye patches, which are soaked with cactus-derived collagen and toning niacin. 3.   Number 4:  Clarifying Shampoo (full size, $32) - Gentle enough for everyday use, this unique cleanser has a low-suds formula that removes build-up without stripping hair of essential oils. 4.  ...

I fell in love with this palette last year when I spotted it at my Sephora right before the holidays.  I had to have this palette, especially since it has just about everything you need in one palette and with "good for you" ingredients, how can you go wrong?   I love Tarte and it's "Amazonian Clay infused" makeup.  This palette has 2 of their famous Amazonian Clay blushes, their Park Avenue Princess bronzer, and Amazonian Clay Shimmering highlighting powder in Champagne on the left side of the palette.  And as they claim, these Tarte Amazonian Clay infused blushes give you up to 12 hours of full-on pigmented color.   On the right side, there are 12 gorgeous Amazonian clay infused eye shadows in both matte and shimmering finishes -  shimmering platinum, shimmering sienna, matte chai tea, matte light pink, shimmering sage, shimmering citrine, shimmering steel blue, shimmering sunset gold, shimmering cocoa, shimmering smoke, matte coffee liquor, burnish...

I say it every month but it's true - the month flew right on by.  I can't believe that November is over and Christmas and New Years are right around the corner!!  Not to mention that my twins will turn 6 - what what??? Here are my favorites for the month of November: 1.   EcoTools Brush Set :  I purchased this set from CVS ages ago and they have been pushed to the back of my brush stash until recently.  I forgot how much I love these little brushes.  My favorite is the "smudge"brush - it's perfect for smudging out color or liner on the upper and lower lash line, as well as applying a highlight color to the inner tear duct area.  Quite honestly, all of these brushes are great and best of all, this is an inexpensive set - quality brushes for a drugstore price!  Not only can you use this set on a daily basis, but it's small enough to travel with. 2.   Blushes:  NYX Mosaic Powder Blush in Rosey and Tarte 12-hour Amazonian Clay Blush ...

Well Tarte has done it again!!  They have put out another gorgeous holiday gift set which is part of the their "Baby It's Bold Outside" holiday collection .  I had originally resisted buying this set only because I have so many eye shadows and a lot of glosses but this set had so many awesome items and at $54, I couldn't resist!  This gift set has a little bit of everything it in - something for the eyes, cheeks, lips, face....and all packaged in a cute and usable gold and purple travel bag. This set has six eye shadow quads (for a total of 24 shadows) with a good mix of bold and neutral shades as well as shimmer and matte finishes.  Unfortunately, like most palettes, there are only a few mattes (4 in this set) and 20 shimmery shades.  I wish that Tarte had included more matte shadows to use for blending but we'll take what we can get.  And as always, the shadows are richly pigmented with great color payoff and they are easy to apply and blend out. ...