The Smile List

I’m sharing the recipe for these mascarpone chocolate toffee bars over at my friend Dina’s blog Buttercream Bakehouse.  Dina is a military wife and mother and loves to share delicious desserts and party ideas on her blog.  She shared some of her favorite baking items on my blog in this past post.  My sister-in-law makes these mascarpone chocolate toffee bars almost every Christmas and they are one of my favorite cookie bars.  I don’t make them unless I plan on sharing them because I would eat the whole pan.  They are easy to make and use a roll of Pillsbury Refrigerated Sugar Cookie Dough as the base.  Head over to Buttercream Bakehouse if you are interested in printing the recipe HERE and check out Dina’s other delicious desserts.

image and affiliate link from Amazon

I’ve been busy working on decluttering this month and have learned a few helpful tips and lessons along the way.  I’ve cleaned out my closet, books, magazines, kitchen desk and I’m currently working on my craft room.  It’s been a slow process for me, but the  book The Life-Changing Magic of  Tidying  has been a game changer for me.  I’ve tried to declutter in the past and all I ever seemed to do was reorganize all of my stuff.  I would also quickly run out of motivation.  I plan on sharing the key points I found helpful from this book in another post.

I’ve got several home projects that will take place in the next few months.  We are renovating our master bathroom and repainting our living room and entryway. I also want to do some rearranging in my craft room so I can actually use it to create rather than have it be a dumping ground for all of my stuff. I redid my home office several months ago and I can’t wait to show you all of the pictures.  The above picture is a sneak peek.  My husband surprised me with a Mac Desktop Computer so I’ve had to do some rearranging since my original pictures.  My friend and interior designer Kyra Davila of KD Interior Design helped make my vision for my office come to life and this space makes me smile every day.  On a side note, my husband informed me that if you zoom into the picture you can see me in my pajamas taking the picture and the mess on my desk in the mirror.  I have been known to stay in my pajamas until noon, especially on the weekends and my desk is often cluttered while I’m working. It just confirms that even though as bloggers we only like to show the pretty stuff, we are far from perfect.

I hope you have a great weekend! What’s on your smile list this month? You can find a few past SMILE lists here, here and here.