One to Nothin'

Candy Cane Brownie Recipe + Winners Announced!

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This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SplendaHoliday #CollectiveBias

I did a lot of baking this weekend. I’m not really sure what to do with the abundance of sugar cookies, chocolate mousse pie and purty brownies in my kitchen right now. I made several recipes to bring to an ugly sweater party (which you already saw if you follow me on Snapchat – @MaryMacKensie) and to try out the SPLENDA® Sugar Blend, found at Walmart.

These festive candy cane brownies were my favorite of the bunch. The following recipe is a less sugar, more Christmas spirit version of this one. I substituted 1/2 cup SPLENDA® Sugar Blend for the 1 cup of sugar the recipe called for, and you couldn’t tell the difference!

Ingredients:
Brownies
1/2 cup vegan butter (or normal if you’re not sensitive to lactose)
1/2 cup SPLENDA® Sugar Blend
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Icing
3 tablespoons vegan butter
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
1 cup powdered sugar
Candy canes or red and white mints

Preheat oven to 350 and grease/flour an 8-inch brownie pan. Melt the butter and mix all brownie ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Spread evenly into the prepared pan, and bake for about 25 minutes. While the brownies are baking, combine all icing ingredients except the mints and beat until smooth. Here’s the fun part: throw the mints into a plastic bag and go crazy. Crush ’em up good! Spread icing onto the brownies as soon as they come out of the oven (it’s pretty thick from the butter and powdered sugar), then sprinkle the crushed mints on top for a final Christmassy touch.

I’m pretty psyched about the holidays, guys. Be prepared for an onslaught of sweet Christmas treats in the new few weeks. There’s something about this season that makes me want to feed everyone!

Check out some other lovely recipes here, and be sure to go to Walmart (aisle A8 shown above) to get your SPLENDA® products. Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a $500 Walmart gift card!

 Giveaway: J&J Holiday Baking with Splenda

PS: The winners of the #PLUCKYtoNOTHIN Instagram challenge have been picked! It was a tough decision, but the GRAND prize winner is THIS lovely lady, and the two runners up are here and here – go send them some congratulatory love. We will be contacting the winners shortly. THANK YOU to everyone who participated! You all rock and I wish I could send smiley poo pinatas to every single one of you. xo

#PLUCKYtoNOTHIN Prizes + Friday Links

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Happy Friday! What’s all that cool stuff up there? Starbucks gift card? Target gift card?! A candle AND a giant plaid scarf??!??

Aw yeah, the prizes are here. These fancy emoji pinatas from The Bull and The Bee are the figurative icing on the figurative cake, my friends. All you beautiful people who participated in the #PLUCKYtoNOTHIN November Instagram challenge are the realist, but three of you are getting some of these goodies.  Come back here on Monday to see if you’re one of them (I know, I’m such a tease), but for now check out these links:

Interesting advice on not being the Woody Allen of freelancing.
I want, no need, this book all about that food photography.
Five things to do right now if you want to travel the world (raises hand).
Obsessed with these bracelets (especially this one).
TIU + Self Magazine = count me in!
How to make a custom 404 page on Blogger (this chick is awesome).
Link up your old holiday blog posts here!
Two bloggy crushes this week: Maggie Main & Bloomuhble

Enjoy your weekend!

20 Warm and Cozy Winter Activities that are Less Netflix, More Chill

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I’m a big fan of lists. But not like productive to-do lists. Those are fine and all, but I like lists of fun things that you and/or your loved ones must complete in a certain amount of time. Bonus points if they’re embarrassing. Once upon a time I instated a rule that for every red light the reader of said list came upon during a short road trip, one article of clothing had to be extracted. I’m not going to make you get naked (yet), but I am going to supply you with a long (and innocent) list of warm and cozy things to do between now and February. Twenty tasks, my friends. Are you up for the challenge? They’re not location-specific, so feel free to add your own.

1. Make horchata and/or hot apple cider (then listen to Vampire Weekend because you can’t not)
2. Wrap up in a blanket scarf (maybe figure out how to tie a blanket scarf while you’re at it)
3. Toast marshmallows – if you have a fireplace, lucky you, but I’m personally a fan of the over-the-stove technique. Also, marshmallows in the microwave = priceless
4. One word, two syllables: Bonfire. Got a beach? Even better
5. Board game and wine night – my all-time favorite games are: Taboo, Heads Up! or Hedbandz, puzzle (who says you can’t be alone for board game and wine night?), Spit and Mexican Train Dominoes
6. Stream music videos on your TV – learn/imitate the dances in your living room (mix up some of these cocktails to set the mood)
7. Put on your comfiest socks you own and slide across the wood/tile floor “Risky Business” style
8. Make a blanket fort (no, you don’t have to have children to make a blanket fort)
9. Play a video game – maybe you already do this on the reg, but at my house we never do, so it’s a special occasion when we get out the Wii and get weird with the tennis game or start a fun, easy to learn game like Mario Galaxy with your significant other – you can do two-player or switch off when you inevitably get frustrated (guilty!)
10. Make a pizza from scratch – you could order it, but making it yourself is way more gratifying and the best part is you can make it as weird as you want (pass the capers and anchovies!)
11. Turn all the lights off and only light candles for light the rest of the night
12. Have a handstand competition
13. Grab a blanket and do some online shopping on your couch – I did way too much of that this week
14. Wear your slippers all day. Even if you go out, slippers stay on
15. Look at or make REAL photo albums – get out the old family photo albums and laugh at all your naked baby pictures (this is one of my favorite things to do)
16. Have a painting party! I once brought over painting supplies for my boyfriend’s birthday celebration and more recently made my roommates paint apartment decorations for Halloween with me – great bonding time
17. Listen to this playlist
18. Snuggle – dogs, cats, babies, lovers – your choice
19. Play mix CDs – you know you have old mix CDs from middle/high school stashed somewhere.. get ’em out and bask in the embarrassment
20. Netflix – I mean, there’s always Netflix. It can be pretty warm and cozy too (especially the holiday section), but I dare you to start a series you’ve never heard of before (DANGER)

Sign up below for the downloadable checklist!

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What are your favorite warm and cozy activities?

Giant Scarves & Poofy Coats

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Coat c/o Shein / Blanket Scarf: Garage / Jeans: Target / Boots: Target / Shirt: Old Navy
This coat makes me feel like Cher Horowitz in the best way possible. Fuzzy, stylish, warm. 
I know I just came from a place where it actually gets cold, but there’s something about this 45-55 degree weather that confuses and makes me even more chilled than I would be in the snow. Which is why I decided to go full-force into the warm clothing realm.
Bulk be damned! I’m usually cautious about wearing long coats and poofy things because my frame is rather petite, I live in California and I feel like I’m being swallowed by larger clothing items. But I said, “screw it,” because you know what? Blog readers probably have no idea how tall (or cold) I am anyway. Unless you saw a picture of me standing next to Jessi anyway.. 
And if we can’t do what we want in fashion, when can we? Am I right? 
Freedom! Self expression! Poofy coats! Heeled booties! Fake eyelashes! Ginormous scarves! Just some of the things I’m into lately.
Oh, and since it’s Wednesday I have one confession for you…
Ready for it?
That’s not my apartment up there. 

That’s right, y’all. I crept on the porch of a stranger’s home and then walked whimsily down their brick-lined driveway like I owned the place. #YOLO

Happy Wednesday!

Linking up here and here.
Photography by Becca Wyant for One to Nothin’. All rights reserved.

Thanksgiving in the Mountains

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You guys, I found snow! Chad and I drove to Tahoe and by the time we arrived at the cutest little dog-friendly cottage (Rustic Cottages) in North Lake Tahoe, the most perfect little snowflakes were falling directly onto my tongue. It was Ziggy’s first time seeing that white stuff, and I took over 300 pictures, so this photo dump was me being picky. You’re welcome. We ate a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, drank a whole lot of wine, hiked snow covered trails, Ziggy sprinted back and forth in the powder, we made snow angels, went ice skating, soaked in a hot spring and rolled around in the snow before running back into the hot water. It was a pretty epic turkey day weekend.

How did you spend your Thanksgiving?

#PLUCKYtoNOTHIN Instagram Challenge Final Roundup!

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#PLUCKYtoNOTHIN November Instagram challenge
You guys are making me SO proud with this #PLUCKYtoNOTHIN Instagram challenge. I know everyone loses motivation for anything besides eating and family bonding time during the holidays, but you lovely people still found time to post moments of your beautiful lives for me to stalk. It’s because of this that Sarah and I are going to have a reeeeeally hard time picking winners for this challenge. If you’re subscribed to my e-newsletter, you learned about a couple extra ways to help you win the challenge last week, so if you happened to have completed any of those super secret tasks, be sure to leave links/social media lovin’ in the comments below. Thanks to everyone who participated in this challenge so far! You guys rock! 

Ghosts of Thanksgiving Posts Past

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I don’t mean to brag, you guys, but I’ve been doing this blogging thing regularly since 2011 and my standard for acceptable blog content (i.e. photos, links, gifs, abbrievs) has changed drastically in that time. Truly, nothing gives me more pleasure than going back into my archives and lol’ing at myself for the awful photos and poorly formatted posts that make me so grateful for whatever tiny loyal readership might miraculously still be with me from those days.

I don’t say it enough, but I am so, so very grateful for every single one of you who take the time to type in the URL up there, humor me by filling out surveys, share my posts, leave comments or even just type some awkward phrase (I’m talkin’ really awkward sometimes) into Google and decide to stick around for longer than the average 4 seconds. 
So with all the nostalgic feels that come along with turkey day, I decided to round up some of the bad, awful, no good and really just embarrassingly awesome (and maybe some that aren’t so bad) blog posts I found worthy of posting around this time for the past four years. Are you ready for this? It’s going to get good. From hair down to my knees, to awkward ombre-dye-jobs-gone-awry (and desperately trying to fix it for the subsequent three years), to ex boyfriends to Turkey Trots to recipes that weren’t even good, I’m laying it all out there for you.
Let’s do this. 
DIY Wooden Center Piece – A DIY centerpiece for your Thanksgiving dinner table. This one is still awesome, mostly because my sister’s projects are always awesome, although my photo editing was a little on the extreme side.
Respect The Bird – Blurry photos, broken links, rambling about “phallic gourds” and, of course, an ex all in one glorious blog post.
Thanksgiving 2011 Recap – The blurriest of photos, a straight up MANE of hair and vegan, sugar-free pies (woof).
Turkey Lurkey Lee – One of my early outfit posts. lolz.
Turkey Cookie – Oh, the infamous turkey cookie. Absolutely the ugliest dessert I’ve ever been proud of.
Thanksgiving 2012 Recap – Complete with champagne, flamingo centerpieces and the bad ombre sneaking onto my head.
Thanksgiving 2013 – My first Thanksgiving away from my family and perhaps after the purchase of my first tripod! I invented the word ‘encharming’ on this fateful night.
Friendsgiving 2014 – Homemade apple pie for my first Friendsgiving! DSLR in my possession at last and Lil Wayne impressions abound. 
Thanksgiving 2014 – Cards Against Humanity and a heritage turkey in the Bay Area FTW!
Things We Should Stop Doing – Including getting mad about how early Christmas decor comes out. Loaded with gifs. Maybe I should bring that back..
Okay, I think that’s enough. 
Happy Thanksgiving 2015, my friends! 

Cheetah Print Dress + Confessions

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Dress: Banana Republic c/o ThredUP/ Booties: Target

Okay, I have some confessions I need to get off my chest, but first let’s talk about this dress. I found this beauty on ThredUP and it was originally from Banana Republic. It’s thick, warm, tighter around the bum area than I’m used to and I’m in to it.

I paired it with these sexy lace-up booties from, you guessed it, Target and returned to my new favorite red lip combo – Covergirl lip perfection lipliner in Passion, filled in all over my lips and topped with Covergirl Outlast in Red Revenge, both found at Walgreens (and first debuted here).

I love this dress because it’s neutral and subtle enough to pair with a blanket scarf, jacket and riding boots for running errands or heading to the office (where I work anyway), but it’s also a skin tight cheetah print situation that could be paired with a faux leather jacket and stilettos for holiday parties or date nights. I’m obsessed with my new faux leather jacket, by the way (it’s under $100 from Nordstrom), but more on that later.

Now for some confessions:
+I forgot to wear deodorant to my spin + HIIT class yesterday. 
+I’m not one of those I-don’t-really-need-deodorant people.
+Then I didn’t shower before going to work. lol.
+I’m bummed that Iconosquare is going to start charging for analytics even if it is only a couple dollars a month. It’s the principle!
+I don’t actually have plans for Thanksgiving yet. Might end up eating frozen vegan pizza and champagne for my big Thanksgiving dinner.
+I really wish I lived closer to my family this time of year.
+I felt like Sophia Vergara (minus the boobs) in this dress.
+I started listening to Christmas music already. Usually I wait until after turkey day, but The Head and The Heart just did me in with this song. 
+I got a little excited about cheetah print and booties and compiled them in a slide show for you below. Most of them are on sale. Shop away, my friends!

Go link up with Sarah & The Pleated Poppy!

Original Photography by Becca Wyant for One to Nothin’. All rights reserved.

5 Game-Changing Webinars for Bloggers & Entrepreneurs

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Friends, there are SO many resources out there for bloggers these days. No joke. They’re just floating around the interwebz waiting to be picked by us hungry content creators/marketers/entrepreneurs. Last month, one of my goals was to watch two online webinars and this month I went HAM by watching almost a dozen of them and there’s no sign of stopping. Some of them have definitely felt more helpful than others, so I decided to round up some of the most helpful ones thus far for you to feast upon. Maybe you have a long plane ride home for the holidays and you’re in between novels, turn this downtime into a learning spree instead of a TV binge watching session (there will be plenty of time for that once you get home, eat ALL the things and lay on the couch with your siblings all night).
One to Nothin

Here are my top 5 webinars/courses/tutorials for bloggers:

1. TBAB (The Blog Audience Blueprint) by The Nectar Collective – This 6-day course is super easy to take in and really implement as a new lesson goes straight to your inbox each day for six days. Big long chunks of information can be intimidating sometimes, and this approach takes the impulse to give up, grab some pizza, watch PLL for the rest of the night and forget about the course forever right out of the equation. Melyssa is a content creating genius and she goes over everything from defining your brand and your audience to starting and rapidly growing your email list.
Sign up here.

2. Squarespace Tutorial by Megan Minns – This gal generously goes through every single step of creating a Squarespace site and all the features it’s capable of. I was totally unfamiliar with the platform and by the end of this tutorial, I was ready to switch over from Blogger (but I chickened out). Any of you guys already using Squarespace? Did you switch over from Blogger? What are your thoughts on broken links? That’s the issue holding me back the most. Watch the tutorial here.

3. How to Build A Successful Blog by Helene in Between – Helene has been on a roll teaching us bloggers (especially those of us without a defined niche) how to make our hard work profitable. This is another email course (yay!), and I’ve already gathered some useful information from the first couple of lessons. Sign up for the course here.

4. Best Ways to Create Passive Income as a Freelancer/Blogger by xo Sarah and Mariah Coz – These are two badass ladies who know what’s up. They show you how to create revenue streams that are truly automated, meaning you get to make money while you’re sleeping (and yes, I know I sound like a sleezy saleswoman, but I’m fo real, yo). Of course I haven’t launched any ebooks or ecourses of my own, but after watching this I feel far more confident that perhaps one day I could do it confidently. Sign up for the replay here.

5. LeadPages Webinar by Tim Paige – I didn’t know anything about LeadPages before watching a joint webinar between Tim and Melyssa Griffin (TNC), and now I feel like I could increase anyone’s email list by a bajillion. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but Tim is a great speaker and this webinar was incredibly informative (not a snooze-fest). This is not the exact lesson I watched (it was only available for a limited time) but I imagine this one has very similar sentiments. Sign up here.

Have you tried any of these webinars? What are your faves that I missed? Please let me know in the comments!

Weekend Hike

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This weekend I did several photo shoots with the amazing Bex (woo hoo, get excited!), baked some chocolate chip cookies, ate some incredible food at Hopscotch in Oakland, watched a lot of “How I Met Your Mother” and hiked Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve in Berkeley. It was WAY steeper than Yelp would have me think, but Ziggy took it like a champ as Chad and I crawled up the incline. Oh, and Chad swung off the cliff, of course. If you’re looking for a good, quick, dog-friendly workout with gorgeous views, I highly recommend it.

How was your weekend? Anyone else ready for Turkey Day celebrations?

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