How to Create Christmas Traditions That Will Amaze!

In the fall, I begin feeling giddy.  I love fall festivities, but I also know that Christmas is approaching.  Decorating the house with Christmas decorations and making cookies fills the house with warmth.  Even though I’m an adult, I feel that magical feeling of Christmas that I felt as a child.  In this post you will discover our unique Christmas card, our Christmas dinner feast and table-cape, and our method to make cookies ahead of time.

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Our Christmas Cards

Each year we scratch our heads to come up with a new idea for our Christmas cards.  This year we thought it would be fun to give everyone a hot chocolate treat in the form of a Christmas card.  We easily cut out these cards with our Cricut Explore Air 2 in Cricut Design Space (alternatively you can cut them out by hand) and a mug template that you can download for free after you subscribe below.  These mugs would also make adorable inexpensive gifts for special people in your life around the holidays!  Find a more detailed tutorial and discover how to upload this template and cut it out here.  Everyone was appreciative for their own Trader Joe’s Organic hot chocolate.

Our Christmas Feast

Once a year we bring out the fancy china, silver, and pressed white table cloths.

These present ornaments were turned into place card holders.  The fun thing about these place card holders is that you can place a small present inside!  We usually place our favorite Bequet sea salt caramels inside the box.  Our place cards, along with the small snowflake on top, were made on my Cricut Explore Air 2.

How do you like our menus and place cards that match the china?  I’m so thankful that my Cricut Explore Air 2 has a writing feature so no one has to see my chicken scratch!

Pomegranates and rosemary make a festive garnish for a Christmas cheese platter!

For our main dish, we served Beef Wellington.  For this recipe, I suggest using the Serious Eats recipe by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt that can be viewed here.  J. Kenji-Lopez-Alt has also written one of my favorite cookbooks called the Food Lab that is pure genius!

We wanted to serve a more refined version of the sweet potato casserole but still include a marshmallow topping.  To achieve this, I would have to make homemade marshmallow fluff and pipe it on top of sweet potatoes.  Find this recipe for sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping and instructions in another one of our posts here.  If you are new to using a piping bag, check out this post for some helpful hints.

Anyone who knows me well can attest that I’m passionate about making bread!  Forming dough is like therapy to me and serving this treat to my family brings me much joy.  For Christmas we served a bread board complete with brioche a tete and sourdough bread.  Brioche is a scrumptious buttery, melt in your mouth bread.  My favorite recipe for it comes from a Craftsy class that will make you a bread-making pro.  The Craftsy class is called Classic and Creative Brioche Pastries.  The crusty sourdough comes from Artisan Bread in Five minutes a Day Book.  Both of these doughs can be made ahead of time.

We love serving bread on this wooden board that we personalized with a Cricut permanent vinyl monogram.  This board also doubles as a great cheese board.

We went on a trip to Chicago to visit Stephanie Izard’s Girl and the Goat restaurant.  To my amazement, my meat-loving husband’s favorite dish at this restaurant were these green beans!  I knew I had to run home and find this recipe.  Stephanie Izard calls this dish Magic Green beans found here.  If you choose to not make the green bean dressing you can also purchase it here.

Cookies, Cookies, and more Cookies

Do yourself a favor and make your cookie dough ahead of time!  Scoop out your cookie dough with a scoop number 40 to achieve uniform-sized cookies.

Cover your raw cookie dough balls with clear wrap and then stick them in the freezer.  We love this handy clear wrap dispenser if you do not like fighting with you clear wrap.  Simply press down to cut the clear wrap.

Once your cookie dough balls are frozen, stick them into a gallon-sized bag.  If you try to put the dough balls in the gallon bag first all your dough balls will all stick together.  It’s a good idea to get into the habit of labeling and dating your bags to ensure freshness.

It’s time to bake these spiced chocolate chip and Meyer lemon cookies!  I bake these cookies straight from the freezer without thawing the dough.  The brilliant part with this freezing method is that you can make one cookie or the whole batch.  Please keep in mind that if you bake from frozen the cookies may take 1-2 extra minutes in the oven.  You can line your cookie sheets with a silpat non-stick liner, but I do not find that necessary with these great non-stick pans that I will link below.

Soon after the cookies come out of the oven, cool them on baking racks.  Enjoy the cookies with a glass of milk!

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