Oh Christmas Tree... Cinnamon Rolls & Tree Lots

I just love making holiday food and doing holiday traditions with my family.  We've hit our stride with favorite traditions.

The weekend after Thanksgiving we always go and get a real tree.  We have shopped for them all over town.  We ended up at Lowes this year.  They had a great selection, but we noticed their prices were a little higher than in years past.  I'm guessing that's probably true of most tree lots.

We sniffed all the trees, checked them out closely and decided on this one.  It's beautiful!  Probably our prettiest tree yet.  

 Lowes had this cute candy land set up.

Baby's first Christmas tree shopping adventure.

Classic Christmas.

Kevin grew up with real trees and I did not.  He convinced me to give it a try years ago and we've been getting a real tree for our family room ever since.  It's so fun!  He's the master at securing the tree on top of the van.

Now on to the Cinnamon Roll Trees!

Give me all the red and greens, tree shaped, santa hat or candy cane striped foods.  This weekend we made cinnamon roll trees.  It was super easy.

You just need one can of roll up cinnamon rolls (Aldi is our favorite) and sprinkles.

Unroll the cinnamon rolls and shape them into a tree.

Bake, ice and add your sprinkles.  The kids loved helping me with this.

Would your family like these cinnamon rolls?  My kids LOVED them!  They can't wait to make them again very soon.

2020 North Pole Breakfast

I've been doing a North Pole breakfast for the kids since 2014.  It's one of my very favorite traditions to kick off the Christmas cheer in December.  It's always the first week of December.  The date is flexible depending on our schedule or Amazon's delivery schedule :)

I set everything up the night before.

I get each kid a new ornament or two to represent things they are currently love, new Christmas pjs, a Christmas book and other random things - snow globes, candy, slippers, games, etc.  I don't wrap anything.  Just lay a pile of things at their place setting.

Olive = rainbow // Fletcher = cheeseburger and fries // Leo = baby s'more

A few tips for saving $$$ on this breakfast:  Use what you have - dishes, napkins, reuse Christmas PEZ dispensers and just buy refill candy, buy Christmas books off season and save them for Christmas and shop the sales on things like ornaments, snow globes and Christmas pjs. 

Our menu changes every year based on my kid's current favorites.  Cinnamon toast is king right now so I build the meal around that.  Lots of reds and greens and sweets.  I do not spend hours on the meal.  I just put together something quick, festive and fun.

 Late night prepping.  Everything but the food gets set out.

Olive:

 Fletcher:

Leo:

I picked these snow globes up at Hobby Lobby.  You put your own picture in them and they're plastic.  I'm hoping that meals they are somewhat indestructible.  We lost 2 snow globes last year.

We have this sweet Santa advent.  Santa moves to a new house every day.  We take turns alternating who gets to open the advent calendars every day.  The same kid does both calendars - they just rotate days.

We put little candy treats in this advent calendar.

Good morning!  Leo's first North Pole Breakfast.  Everyone loved it!

I love these 3 and my 2020 ornament.

It's never too late to put together a North Pole Breakfast for your own family!

DIY Stocking Letters

Do you have personalized stockings?

I've wanted letters for our stockings for years, but have never found any I loved.  I take that back.  All the ones that I loved were pricey when you had to buy five of them.  

I was determined to get letters this year.  I started looking weeks ago and wasn't able to find anything I loved to go with our stockings.  I was at Walmart and found the perfect letters in the craft section.  I knew it would be an inexpensive, simple DIY project.

Let me show you!

You'll just need letters that you love, twine and hot glue.

The letters were $1.29 each and I already had all of the other supplies.  The craft section had the entire alphabet and they came already white washed so no painting necessary.

Hang your stockings and then cut some sample size pieces of twine to determine the length you want your letters to hang.  I started out with 6 inches, tried 8 inches and decided the right number for my stockings was 12 inches.

I didn't think that one strand of twine looked substantial enough so I cut three 12 inch strings for each letter and braided them.  I knotted the three strings together, asked my daughter to hold it, braided the strings and then knotted the other end.  Repeated the process for all five letters.

I hot glued them in tow spots in each letter.  I made sure to glue the knot at about the same spot at the top of the letter to ensure that the letters would hang uniformly.  Let them all dry for a few minutes and then hang.

My 2020 Christmas mantle!  I LOVE it.  It might just be my favorite Christmas mantle ever.  I got free pine branches from Lowes when they trimmed up our Christmas tree, went out and cut some branches of berries from my yard and added in some red glittery garland/pom poms.

We've got our Christmas books in boxes on both sides of the fireplace and are ready to enjoy the Christmas season.  I smile every time I look at this spot in my house.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!

Thanksgiving Leftover Soup

I know I can't be the only one who has a refrigerator full of Thanksgiving leftovers days after Thanksgiving.  Who else has leftovers!?!?

I was inspired to make a Thanksgiving leftover soup after seeing this recipe:

Creamy Turkey Wild Rice Soup by The Food Charlatan

I loved the idea of that soup, but didn't have all the fresh herbs on hand.  I wanted to come up with a recipe that would reinvent my Thanksgiving leftovers without breaking the bank.  My recipe works with your Thanksgiving leftovers and many things you likely already have in your pantry or fridge.

Thanksgiving Leftover Soup

6 c water

3 c reserved turkey broth from cooking your turkey (mine came from my crock pot turkey)*

2 t chicken bouillon

2 c shredded turkey*

1 box Rice A Roni Long Grain & Wild Rice

1 seasoning packet from the Rice A Roni

salt & pepper to taste

1 t oregano

1 t basil

4 diced garlic cloves

1 c chopped celery*

1 c chopped onion*

1 c chopped carrots

1 c corn*

1 c gravy*

4 T half and half

Directions:

Chop everything into small pieces, shred your turkey and add all of the ingredients into your soup pot.  Let cook for at least 1 hour and let simmer for 1-2 hours for the flavors to really develop.

Notes: I rarely save my broth from cooking meat in the crock pot, but several wonderful cooks that I follow on social media all do it.  They talked about all the flavor and goodness that comes from that broth.  They were right!  This soup had the best flavor and I have to give the credit to that delicious homemade turkey broth.

Serve your soup with a delicious crusty bread.  That is my favorite recipe that I blogged about earlier this year.  It makes the best, easiest, prettiest loaf of crusty bread.

Would your family eat this??

It smelled heavenly as it was cooking and my family loved it!  They said I needed to write my own cookbook with this recipe.  They sure know the way to my heart :)

I think this will be a new post Thanksgiving recipe for us every year.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving in Review

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.  We made some changes and ended up staying home this year.  Kevin and I weren't feeling great and it was nice to be home to rest, relax and enjoy some yummy food.  We missed our family, but are hoping to get to see them soon.

I cooked all the things.  Pie is my favorite thing to make.  I love all the traditional foods and am confident making them since we've spent several Thanksgivings at home over the years.  The kids were eager to try all the Thanksgiving foods.  They sampled everything and decided they do like turkey, stuffing is alright, cranberry sauce is gross and they each picked a pie they liked - Pecan for Fletcher and Pumpkin for Olive.  Leo tasted a little bit of everything, too.  Sweet potatoes and homemade bread were his favorites.

We stayed home, watched some fun Christmas movies for movie night, undecorated from Thanksgiving and feel like we're ready to get excited for the Christmas season.

Here are our picture highlights of Thanksgiving:

We tried to watch the parade, got bored with all the interviews and saved our attention for the dog show afterwards.

I made pies for the grown ups and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for the kids.

Leo's first Thanksgiving.  He loved the food and got into everything.  Cute little turkey!

I'm thankful for these 3 and any opportunities for holiday clothes.

I set a festive table just for the 5 of us.

These 2 have been a part of our family for 2 months now.

My kids love Play-Doh.  We did a Play-Doh Pie making contest with my mini pie tins.

This crazy 7 month old has decided standing is his favorite.  He's too young for this nonsense.

And a real life moment.  Long days.  Dirty Mirror.  Messy Bun.  And baby snuggles.

I'm thankful for all these sweet moments together.

We are Thankful for... Charcuterie!

I knew I'd be cooking more later in the week so I opted for an easy dinner last night - a Thanksgiving Charcuterie Board!  This is such an easy dinner for me to make.  No pots and pans to clean, minimal dishes, a great way to finish up little bits of everything and it just requires some chopping that I don't mind one bit.

Hello, Thanksgiving Turkey Charcuterie Board.

I'm guessing we'll be having this again before Thanksgiving break is over.  It's a family favorite.

I did salty snacks in rows for the feathers, carrot and cucumber sticks, super thin cut apples for feathers, thin slices of cheese, sweet pepper body, pistachios for a head and I served a loaf of homemade bread on the side.  Everyone knew it was a turkey without me having to tell them so I'm calling it a great turkey success :)

And in honor of Thanksgiving, I interviewed everyone to find out 3 things they're thankful for this year.

Olive // Age 7

1. I'm thankful for my family.

2.  I'm thankful my teacher and my school.

3. I'm VERY thankful for our girl kittens.  I love them too much!

Fletcher // Age 4

1. I'm so "thankyful" for Mommy & Daddy.

2.  And our whole family including the kittens.

3.  I'm "thankyfull" for my toys.

Leo // Age 7 months (what we'd assume he'd say :)

1.  I'm so thankful I can finally crawl.

2. I'm thankful for Mama.

3. I'm thankful these people are sharing their people food with me.

Whitney //

1.  I'm thankful for our cozy home.

2. I am thankful all the family time we've had this year.

3. I'm thankful for my health.

Kevin //

1. You!  (Can I say you for all three?? :)

2. Our kids.

3. Our neighborhood.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the people you love.  I know COVID likely changed some of your plans, but I hope you can find a way to celebrate and stay positive.  Hugs to you!  

I'm going to enjoy a Thanksgiving Break and will see you back here on Monday.