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I love magazines, I think they are like monthly treats of eye candy and inspiration. They really can make you feel special and offer up some wonderful dreams and ideas. So I recently scooped up the Christmas Issues of both Martha Stewart Living and Inside-Out(which I totally love). I recommend both issues to all of those who do not subscribe to or who have not picked a copy yet. They are filled with so many wonderful images and recipes and cute little gift ideas. I mean we all know that Marthas team will offer up some tantalizing ideas right? Anyhow, here are a few of my favorite images from them both! Unfortunately I will not be using any of these ideas this year, as the holidays just sort of sneaked upon me, but I made sure to grab them to hopefully pre-plan my festivities for next year! Hope these inspire!

Oh me oh my! The photo styling of Rebecca Thuss is absolutely amazing! The colors, the compositions, and the concepts are just fabulous. Her talents as a wedding designer and crafter definitely shows within her work! As stated on her website: “She delights in throwing parties, has a passion for packaging, a weakness for fanciful candy and confections, and an infatuation with vintage paper items”. If you are an avid reader of Martha Stewart Weddings, then you are probably familiar with her work, as she was the Style Director for the magazine from 2003-2006. Click Here to read more about Rebecca. Her website is filled with colorful and charming eye candy and great packaging and entertaining ideas, so consider yourself warned!

I wanted to share this recipe for “Chocolate Malt Sandwiches” that I made via Martha Stewart. They came out light and delicately sweet, so it was a nice sweet fix without that over the top chocolate richness (Well, at least I felt like I was eating lighter…Ha!)

I made several adjustments to mine: I did not have any creme fraiche so I just used plain soy yogurt. I do not buy regular milk, so I think I used either rice or almond milk in place of that. For my filling, I only used a mixture of cream cheese, dutch cocoa powder, and powdered sugar. If you are vegan, you could easily try using soy/tofu based cream cheese for the filling and soy/tofu based sour cream(in place of the fraiche. I must say that the tofutti sour cream is quite divine), egg replacer for the eggs, and vegan margarine. Anyhow, either way you do it, you should definitely give them a try because they are super yummy & pretty once baked. Oh, and by no means do you have to make them as big as I did, I could barely eat one of these in one sitting!