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This was Christmas 2018, and it’s so crazy how much has changed in the year! That piano is now blue and looks fantastic.
Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. It always has been. We’ve always had a really big Christmas Eve party.
When I was growing up the party was pretty big. Everyone we knew came over. And I would look forward to it all year long.
All our family and friends would come over and my mom would make a big spread of Italian food. There was never a sit down dinner, but rather plenty of appetizers.
My mom has always made too much food. So there would be plenty of left overs for Christmas day and through the week.
As we got older, our Christmas Eve celebration got smaller and smaller. Now it’s mainly just immediate family and a couple friends.
Where there used to be 50-75 people in and out of the house, not it’s a quiet 20 who gather play games, read stories, and eat lots of food.
Last year, when my parents moved out of state, I took over the yearly Christmas Eve gathering. I’ve always loved decorating for Christmas, but last year was extra special because people were actually going to see it!
My mom also couldn’t use a lot of her decor because they had moved. So I got to use it in my house instead! These Santa Clauses were something that my mom had collected for years. It was special to have them in my house.
Of course you know I change up my gallery wall as well. I put up this Glory to God printable and then have Mistletoes for each of my kids.
We actually have a whole back room and back bedroom in our house that I don’t show very often. It’s technically my parents space. Their cat lives back there, and it’s their space for when they come in to town.
My mom wasn’t going to be able to decorate it this year because they weren’t going to be in town very long before Christmas. She was bummed, so I decided to decorate back there when I decorated the rest of the house.
So the cat got to enjoy Christmas decor all season long! I picked some of my moms favorites and put them in their living space.
This is our ‘Whoville tree’. It was always mine and my sisters job to decorate it. It was usually displayed in our bathroom growing up.
The tree has all these funky bobbles on it and it’s such a cute little tree. I didn’t want to pull out the big tree to decorate back here, so this small one had to do!
And of course there was lots and lots of food. My mom has taught me to have way too much food on hand, just in case. We’d rather have left over than have people go hungry!
Those bags on the table were our white elephant gifts! Since our Christmas Eve celebration has gotten smaller we’ve started doing white elephant gifts and try to play fun games.
These cookies were special dairy-free sugar cookies since Little Miss is allergic to milk. They were so delicious! Normally we make all my Nana’s cookie recipes, but this year we had to make these.
Then we always have mini weenies and meatballs or sausages from Claros! It wouldn’t be Christmas without those things!
Seriously, the food is half the reason I look forward to Christmas. The company is the other half, and just a tiny sliver for the presents.
Christmas has changed and now all the presents under the tree are for our kids. But I love watching them unwrap their gifts and passing on our traditions to them.
That’s what we did for Christmas 2018. I’m so excited for Christmas 2019!