Christmas Traditions
Christmas has always been my favorite holiday of the year. I love all the shopping, decorating + festive activities, however, these are not (the only) reasons I love Christmas. I love Christmas for the joy and hope it brings, along with the beauty it possesses in our home and within our family. I love the traditions and intentional time to “be” and in our family it looks a little like this…
A few weeks leading up to Christmas my girls and I tie on our aprons for a night of Christmas cookie baking. Claire and Emma both love baking and are so good at it!! So that makes the outcome amazing every time! As Christmas approaches, we spend Christmas Eve at church celebrating the birth of our King which offers most years a beautiful candle lighting and sweet Christmas songs with depth and meaning. That same night church is followed by time with friends and family which ALWAYS includes delicious hors d’oeuvres, candles, and music - all of my favorite things in one place.
Then there’s Christmas Day!!
For our family this is a treasured day of stillness, intimacy, and the appreciation of the beautiful things. Christmas morning is when the sweetness really happens, there is still something magical about waking up to white lights and a tree full of gifts. I love the leisureliness of the morning starting with coffee, making a fire in the fireplace, turning on Christmas music, and sitting in our pjs all day long together.
Each Christmas morning we all gather in a casual way with the music, fire, and lights in the background and slowly unwrap our little gorgeous gifts anticipating the face of the one we bought the gift for. After our living room is filled with a pile of beautiful paper and ribbon - it’s on to the kitchen for me. Each year on this day only, I make homemade cinnamon rolls. My mouth is watering just thinking about it right now. Then we all transition into the kitchen for home baked goodness and of course a couple slices of bacon to offset the sugar buzz.
After that it’s back to the fire and sofas for lounging, snuggling, blankets, naps, and Christmas movies. It’s the one day out of the year that we all stay in this mode and where the rest of the world doesn’t matter. It’s just us.
I’ve typically planned ahead and instead of making a large dinner spread and working in the kitchen all day, I’ve ordered our favorite Mexican place the day before for an all day grazing so the family can help themselves to food when they’re hungry and mama gets to snuggle with everyone else.
When my kiddos were young we would follow up the grazing and lounging with a Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake (we lived there for 4 years!), a delicious recipe of old. If you haven’t made it before, you must! It’s pretty amazing, but for us this was always Jesus’ birthday cake. We would put candles in it and sing a happy birthday song to our one and only Savior.
Here’s to another glorious Christmas Day with love…
Your friend and designer, xx
CINNAMON ROLL RECIPE
PREP: 15 minutes
BAKE: 30 minutes
YIELDS: One Dozen
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 loaf of Frozen Bread Dough
- 3/4 stick of Butter
- 1 cup Brown Sugar
- 1/4 cup 100% Maple Syrup
- 1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
- 2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Defrost the bread at least 3-6 hours prior to baking (look at your bread for defrosting instructions). The rolls will rise in the bag.
- Flour your surface and rolling pin - flatten dough to 1/2”
- Begin melting 1/2 cup of butter with the brown sugar + maple syrup in sauce pan
- Once melted, pour mixture into a large cookie sheet (with edges) - don’t get too close to the top, you don’t want it overflowing.
- In a separate sauce pan, melt 1/4 butter
- In a small bowl, mix granulated sugar + cinnamon
- Brush the 1/2” dough with the melted butter + sprinkle with the cinnamon/sugar mix
- Tightly roll the dough, pulling towards you as your turn.
- Once in a rolled log, pull the length of it and slice the roll into 12, 1” pieces
- Place pieces over the melted goodness on your cookie sheet
- Bake 30-35 minutes (until dough is risen + fluffy)
- Once baked, pull out and carefully later another bookie sheet upside down over the rolls. Carefully flip both the cinnamon rolls + cookie sheet over, to let the sweet drizzle cover the rolls. Serve them hot, right out of the oven!
I like to pair them with a breakfast meat to add some savory to the sweetness and coffee, of course, is a must have! Enjoy!