Our 2025 Christmas Season & 8 Months Pregnant!

I hope you all had the most amazing Christmas. This is my sixteenth year sharing my Christmas blog, which is so hard to believe. I have been doing this for such a long time, but my Christmas recap is always my favorite post to write.

It feels even more special now that I have a home with my own family. Of course, we miss our extended family since we do not all live close together, but there is something truly magical about experiencing the season through my toddler’s eyes. It makes every tradition feel brand new again.

I am just about 35 weeks pregnant, and I somehow have been nonstop on the moving around until my legs swell level. After we put all the Christmas decorations together yesterday (I know I always get so much slack for this), I officially hit my limit. I am no longer capable of the amount of running around I have been doing. My watch has logged over 15k steps almost every day for the past few months. We had to get a head start on putting away the decor because we need to get cracking on bringing the baby stuff down from the attic and setting everything up. We are not even doing a nursery this time around (more on that later!)

I think I have just been a little manic trying to stay busy and make all the magical Christmas moments happen before our baby boy arrives. I am measuring around the first week of February, so we shall see. I was early with my first, so I truly do not know what to expect this time. I have no plans and no expectations that’s for sure.

What I do know is that I am tired, we still have a lot to do to get ready, and I will be sure to talk more about that later. For now, I needed to get this Christmas recap blog up. I am sharing everything we did to celebrate the weeks leading up to Christmas, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day.

This blog is going to be a long one, but all of the photos from dinner are so fun to look through. I really need to make a montage of all the dinner settings I have put together throughout the years.

I had originally wanted to do a Valentine’s Day dinner soon, but I have a feeling I may have my hands full that day, if you know what I mean. So maybe a Galentine’s Day dinner in 2027 instead!

The weeks have completely flown by. Tell me how it is already December. Most of my recaps are not usually set up like this, but everything has been such a blur that I had to collage as much as I could. Otherwise, I would be sitting here typing for the next month.

Let’s talk about some of the things we have been up to.

A few weeks ago, we had enough. Enough of the clutter in the playroom, enough of pulling out every single toy, and enough of it being so overwhelming that it was hard to even go in there and play. If I was feeling overwhelmed, I know he was too. So I finally pulled the cards and started the toy rotation method. After a few weeks of doing this, let me just tell you how successful it has been. The playroom has stayed clean, and it was very necessary before all the Christmas gifts arrived.

I organized everything into bins we found at Walmart and stacked them in the guest room closet downstairs near the playroom. I just go in there to grab toys when I want to rotate them or if he asks for a specific one. Some of the toys he has not even thought about or asked for at all. It has been so nice. We can actually hang out in his playroom without it feeling overwhelming or having puzzle pieces and games scattered all over the place. We bought extra bins and most of his Christmas gifts went into the bins. We will bring them out randomly!

Another week flew by in a flash. We started our Sunday at church, followed by a much needed Costco visit, and then spent the rest of the day diving straight into garage organization. We got lucky because our toddler thinks organizing and doing random house projects is fun. He calls himself the trusty little helper. Having the urge to declutter everything right now is definitely a sign that I am in the final stretch and nesting has fully taken over.

A few takeaways from the gallery above.

Meal prep for the week included my favorite sheet pan meal, which I am actually making again tonight, along with turkey meatloaf to keep in the fridge for easy meals. The sheet pan dinner includes two packages of red pepper queso chicken sausage (I get it at Publix and it is the best), sliced carrots, zucchini, peppers, and onions. I bake it all together and then serve it over quinoa. The chicken cooks faster, but it always turns out great. My son will take a few bites of the chicken, but this one is mainly for Kyle and me.

We also restocked our library books. He loves our weekly library visits, and it is so fun pulling out new books every night. We have a little bookshelf in his room that we restock each week, and he loves to sit and read with me. I have always loved children’s books, and honestly, it is the only reading I am doing lately.

Our favorite part of the week was my son’s Christmas concert. I absolutely love seeing him up on that stage dancing, singing, and being so funny alongside a group of three year olds. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard.

We did a lot of baking this week. Gifts for teachers, cookies for Jingle Jam at church, pralines for family packages, and granola for gifting. I love gifting my granola recipe because it is healthy, nut free, and lasts for a long time. Plus, it is so good.

I also had another prenatal appointment, which I cannot believe has turned into once a week visits already. After that, we headed to one of my favorites, Flower Child, for lunch. They have the best steak, and my picky toddler will happily eat their hummus and pita. He did so well at the appointment and all morning, so we stopped by The Salty Donut to split a donut afterward. I let him pick it out, and we shared it.

The following Saturday, my son spent the entire day with his grandparents so we could wrap all of the gifts and get everything ready for Christmas. I went over to pick him up around four and ended up staying for dinner and watching the Eagles game with them. The next morning was church, followed by another full day of Christmas baking. I did so much baking, which you will see below. I love putting together gift boxes every holiday, and I also needed to get all of the baking out of my system since I will not have much time for it very soon.

On the last day of school before break, we filled our teachers’ gift bags with printed cards I made in Canva. Each card had an open space to tape a gift card to, and we also added a bag of homemade granola.

The trick to making printed at home cards look better is using card stock paper in your printer. I used to do this all the time with my bakery business.

As you can see from the gallery above, I made a lot of desserts. I spent the afternoon making peanut brittle, maple walnut fudge, peanut butter Oreo fudge, extra granola (my brother’s favorite), frosted sugar cookies, peppermint hot chocolate cookies, orange ginger cookies, frosted gingerbread bars, and pralines. I planned to package everything in cute bakery boxes for Kyle’s work, our neighbors, and a few other people. We also shipped fudge, granola, peanut brittle, and pralines to family.

Another really fun Christmas tradition that took place was the Cookies with Toddlers party that I host every year. Make sure to read that blog here. It was so much fun, and I absolutely love all of the photos.

On Monday, I packed and sealed all of the desserts and did all of the drop offs. My son and I had so much fun delivering everything. We treated ourselves to Ilios for lunch, and once it was all done, we plopped on the couch for an hour of A Charlie Brown Christmas to relax and decompress after all of the hard work.

On Christmas Eve, I made some extra peanut brittle and bagged it up for a few people at church. I also got started on the pecan brownie pie recipe. I knew it was going to take a while and could possibly be a fail, so I decided to make it the night before Christmas dinner.

If you remember my trip to Savannah a few weeks ago, we had the most amazing brownie pecan pie, and I knew immediately that I wanted to attempt it for Christmas this year. I will let you know how it turned out at the bottom of the post…

I only have a little over a month to go, so I have refused to buy maternity clothes. I squeezed into a dress I have had for years. Sadly, I was not wearing red or green on Christmas, but at this point, getting anything to fit feels like a win. Over the past few weeks, I think the final stretch fluids and swelling have officially kicked in. I was doing great, but now I am having trouble even zipping my boots. At the end of the day there is an inch indent where my socks were on my ankles. I am really going to try to relax more in January and stop spending all day on my feet, because I think that is making my legs swell so much. Of course, that is easier said than done.

Our church held a service at 4 pm, so we all got dressed up, and my parents even came with us. We headed to the service, and it was so beautiful with the candlelight, the music, and the luminary display. A wonderful tribute to the real reason for the season!

When we got home, we kept things simple and cozy. We had a little charcuterie for dinner, baked some sugar cookies for Santa (I had the dough and frosting pre made in the fridge for my son), spread reindeer bait out on the grass (he is very much like my dad and was concerned about ants eating it), and then got him bathed and into bed. After that, I did a quick house clean and mopped the floors from the past few days of baking.

I do not know what it is, but I love waking up to a super clean and cozy house on Christmas morning. It is the last day with the decor up, and Christmas gets a little chaotic with all the food and presents. If I can manage to clean before bed, it definitely helps my mind.

We do keep our manger up until January 6th!

I was up at 4:30 am on Christmas morning, feeling so excited for all of the morning magic, but also soaking in a few quiet, peaceful hours with my coffee.

Snapchat has such an amazing AI feature. I used the “add Santa to my house” photo, and it looked so real, especially to a toddler. I showed it to him that morning, and he could not believe it.

Christmas morning is also when I do his annual letter from Santa. I type it all out and print it to leave by the milk and cookies.

Shockingly, he slept until 8 am, which gave us plenty of time to relax. At one point, Kyle said, “Should we go wake him up?” and every mom knows the answer to that question is a big no.

We also planned to stay up later with my parents for dinner and games, so we were more than happy to let him sleep as long as he wanted.

I halved the sourdough cinnamon roll recipe, and made just a small batch!

Every Christmas morning, we leave a trail of chocolate gold coins from his bedroom to the tree. He follows them down and collects them with the cutest commentary along the way.

He was completely over the moon about Santa’s visit. Last year was magical, but this year feels different in the best way. His understanding of Santa and all of the Christmas magic is really starting to come to life.

Before I have to explain myself, I promise not all of the gifts under the tree were from us to him, even though it may look like we have seven kids. Some gifts were for my parents, my husband, our dogs, and me, and my parents also dropped off the gifts they wanted to give him the night before. On top of that, he has three sets of grandparents who sent boxes, along with several aunts and uncles, so he was very spoiled.

The good news is that we stored a lot of the gifts, and he has already forgotten about them. We will pull them out randomly over time, especially the endless Lego sets.

After hours of present unwrapping and breakfast, we were ready to settle in, watch some football on TV, play with Santa’s presents, and let the grandparents take over. Ha. After we open gifts with him in the morning, my parents come over around noon to open the gifts they bought with him, and I love that tradition.

I was such a Christmas kid. I lived for it, and I still love it just as much. We really savor the morning and have him unwrap one gift at a time to keep the Christmas magic going. It ended up taking us over three hours with all the breakfast breaks, and of course Kyle and I were stopping in the middle to recycle and toss wrapping paper as we went.

I grew up with wrapping paper flying all over the place, but now I make sure it goes straight into the recycle box. I cannot let myself get overwhelmed by messes. The toys stress me out enough on their own.

Later in the afternoon, I made cappuccinos for the family because we all needed a little pick me up. We watched football, sat around building Legos, and then headed out to walk the dogs since it was 70 degrees on Christmas.

And I am not a fan of warm weather on Christmas. Ever. Out of all the cold days we have had, of course it had to be warm on Christmas. That said, I cranked up the air so we could still wear our cozy matching Christmas pajamas.

Around 4 pm, I got started on Christmas dinner. I kept things easy and simple this year, especially compared to last year.

That said, cooking and baking are my Super Bowl, and they bring me so much joy. It is not something I dread or see as a chore. I truly love it. I love planning the menu, serving the dishes, and watching everything come together in the end. It is probably why I took about a thousand photos of the table setting.

The menu I made was super easy to execute, and there were even a few things I could have done in advance, like slicing the potatoes the night before since that was the most time consuming part.

I did make the sourdough bread a few days before Christmas and froze the slices. That is always easier than trying to bake and slice bread in the afternoon while everything else is going on.

Our menu consisted of cherry apple mocktails, baked and broiled orange glazed salmon filets, a tossed Italian and Asiago salad with pepperoni, romaine and arugula, a tray of balsamic cucumbers and tomatoes to add on top along with Merlot Murray cheese and Italian herb olive oil. We also had toasted pesto sourdough bread and roasted Yukon hasselback potatoes. Recipes are all down below!

I wanted everything to be full of amazing flavor while still feeling fresh and light, especially since we had plenty of desserts coming our way afterward.

Like all of my holiday dinners, I always make sure to set the table a little fancier than usual. I love a candlelit setting.

Festive Italian House Salad

Salad: Arugula and romaine tossed in a homemade dressing made with olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, red wine vinegar, honey, and garlic powder. Finished with sliced pepperoni, avocado slices, and grated Asiago rosemary olive oil cheese.

Seasoned & Roasted Hasselback Yukon Potatoes:

Rinse the Yukon potatoes and thinly slice them, making parallel cuts and stopping just before cutting all the way through.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper, then drizzle with avocado oil. Place them in the oven first, as they take the longest to cook.

Roasted Orange Glazed Salmon

I make this salmon all the time. I usually serve it with rice and green beans and cook it in the air fryer, but when I am making it in a larger quantity, I use the oven instead.

Start by placing the salmon filets in an oven safe dish. Coat the bottom of the pan with avocado oil and drizzle a little over the top of the salmon as well. Pour soy sauce over the filets. I used about one third cup of soy sauce total and added extra around the salmon so I could spoon some of the juices over the top once it came out of the oven.

Squeeze the juice of half an orange all over the salmon filets. Season with everything but the bagel seasoning, a light dusting of garlic powder, dried dill, black pepper, and brown sugar. You can also use honey instead. On a normal weeknight, I usually use honey, but for a holiday dinner, brown sugar felt right. The combination of orange, brown sugar, garlic, and soy sauce makes this salmon so flavorful.

Bake the salmon in a 400 degree oven for about fifteen minutes. Then broil at 550 for the final two minutes to make the top slightly crispy. Remove the salmon from the oven once it reaches an internal temperature of 140 degrees and let it rest so it can continue cooking before serving. Be careful not to overcook it. Flaky, tender salmon that falls apart easily is the goal.

Before serving, spoon the extra juices from the pan over the salmon on the serving platter. This salmon is so good that I already want to make it again this week. I will be sure to film a video tutorial the next time I make it. As soon as the fork hit it, it just fell apart.

Pesto Sourdough Bread

I used my go to sourdough bread recipe and folded pesto and Parmesan into the center before cold proofing. Before baking, I added a little more pesto on top. Once it was baked, I sliced the bread, placed the slices on a baking sheet, and toasted them before adding them to the table.

The bread was served with a homemade Italian herb olive oil dip. I added Italian seasoning, fresh basil, grated Parmesan, garlic powder, black pepper, and a pinch of sugar to a high quality olive oil.

Balsamic Glaze Cheese & Tomato Platter.

I have been doing a new thing where I season my tomatoes and place them on a separate tray to be added on top of the salad. I think that adding tomatoes, cucumbers, and balsamic directly into the salad can sometimes weigh it down, so I love serving them on the side. Sometimes I even just top my sourdough bread with them instead. I also think it looks really pretty to display all of the extra tomatoes on a tray with a side of really good, high quality cheese.

I used a medley of grape tomatoes along with my favorite, Kumato tomatoes. I sliced them and tossed them with salt, pepper, and olive oil, then drizzled balsamic glaze over the top. I also added a row of cucumbers next to the tomatoes as a barrier for the Merlot cheese. Guests could add everything to their salad or pile it on their bread.

Table Decor:

I already had most of the decor, but every year I like to change a few things. This year, I found the most amazing tablecloth from HomeGoods. The key to getting it to look perfect on the table is placing it on first and then ironing it directly on the table. It lays flat without sliding, and the edges fold perfectly.

All of my gold candle holders and candles are from Hobby Lobby. They have the best deals, and once a week they offer 50 percent off all candles. I even added Ferrero Rocher gold wrapped chocolates as part of the decor. My sparkly reindeer are also from Hobby Lobby, and the garland was only ten dollars from Michaels.

The rest of the details for the table settings are linked in my Thanksgiving guide.

• Gold-trimmed glasses
• White speckled plates
• Napkins
• Wooden napkin rings
• Gold candle holders
• Rust-colored candle holders
• Sparkly table garland
• Chargers
• Seagrass Placemats
• Olive Green Tapers
• Prelit Winter Garland

Cherry & Apple Citrus Fizz Mocktail

These simple mocktails are made with freshly squeezed orange juice, organic no added sugar pure cherry juice, and Crisp Apple Olipop, finished with a sprig of fresh rosemary from my garden. They were so refreshing.

Dinner was so good. We sat around for a solid hour just enjoying the meal and filling our bellies.

Amazing.

It had a lot of steps, and I found myself reading the recipe over and over to really memorize everything. I did not want to be staring at the recipe card while trying to move quickly through the process. A few notes were missing from the original recipe, like how much vanilla to add to the brownie filling, so I made that part up as I went. For the pecan topping, you can definitely cut that portion in half, because I had a lot left over.

Overall, it was incredible and tasted so much like the pie we had in Savannah. Even though it was a bit of a labor to make, I would absolutely make it again because it was that good. I also left out the bourbon. I didn’t have any and didn’t feel like buying any!

It is a family tradition to dive straight into desserts after dinner, especially my mom’s strawberry dessert, which is truly the best. After that, we always play lottery pong. This year, we had a new contestant, and unfortunately for the rest of us, he absolutely dominated. Like, why was he so good.

How to play lottery pong? (alcohol free game)

You purchase a bunch of lottery scratch off tickets and place them on a countertop or table, along with some cash prizes like ones, fives, and a few higher bills. There are usually only a few cups with no prizes, but most cups have at least one dollar underneath them.

We put rocks in the cups to weigh them down since we do not play with alcohol or drinks. Each player gets one chance to toss a ping pong ball into a cup. If you make it into a cup, you keep whatever prize is underneath. If you miss, it is the next player’s turn. Bounces do not count as landing in two cups, and we play until all of the prizes are gone.

You can use as many cups as you want or keep it simple with fewer cups, and you can stack or arrange them however you like. It is such a fun game to play with family during the holidays, and everyone ends up a winner.

The funniest part was that I posted a video of my son completely whooping us, and it went viral across all platforms with a total of three million views.

and a happy new year!

We have been spending the days after Christmas putting everything away, bringing the baby things down from the attic, and getting the house ready for our baby boy to arrive. We are getting so excited.

I will be sharing some pregnancy recaps, writing posts about packing my hospital bags for the second time, and diving into a lot of New Year content as I do my best to slow down and relax over the next month. That is so much easier said than done with an active toddler this time around.

The good news is that he is such a great kid and truly loves to help. It makes everything feel a little easier when he wants to be a part of it.

I hope you all have an amazing New Year! I’m sure I’ll be back on the blog before then! xo