I have always loved Christmas. My Mom always did such a good job of making it totally magical for me. She decorated every surface in the house and would bake fresh Christmas goodies every few days. We would listen to her Christmas records CONSTANTLY and drink cocoa and coffee out of Santa mugs.

And no matter how old I got, there were certain traditions she always made sure to include: new Christmas jammies, reading Christmas books together, buying 1 new ornament every year, having friends over on Christmas Eve, and not letting me into the den on Christmas morning until she had the chance to go turn on all the lights, put on the Christmas records, and push “start” on the coffee pot. These are all things I took for granted - until I had kids of my own. Then it became my turn! My turn to continue those old traditions and my turn to determine new ones. My turn to keep the magic alive! And now that my kids are older (Abby is 18 and in college, Maggie is 14, and my stepson Alex is married and doesn’t live at home), those traditions look a bit different. It’s a little bit harder to sustain the same level of holiday magic now that they’re not little anymore.

But don’t think I’m giving up completely on the magic... Christmas lives in my blood! I’m a creative. It’s part of me. I LOVE CHRISTMAS! I just have to be more strategic about creating “the magic” now.

What do we do now that the kids are older? I thought you’d never ask!

We still decorate gingerbread houses every year. This year Abby decorated mini-houses with some friends from school (they came over to help us decorate the tree) and the girls and I also spent one Sunday decorating houses a few weeks ago. They’re never showpieces… mostly it’s a time for us to laugh and eat ALL.THE.GUMDROPS and listen to Christmas music and fuss that someone else's house looks better than ours.

We also still try to do some kind of Christmas crafts - whether it’s painting, making ornaments, making paper chains, etc. This year Maggie and I spent a whole day making waterless snow globes and a festive pom-pom garland. Side note: if you’ve never made pom-poms before, it’s a quick craft and SO FUN!!!

This isn’t the exact one we have (we bought it local), but here is the kind of pom-pom maker we have.

When I was a kid I didn’t get Advent calendars. I guess I don’t really know what Advent is. To me (as a kid) - Advent was a wreath on the altar at Church and a different family lit its candles every Sunday and read a passage of the Christmas story from the Bible (if I’m remembering correctly). When the girls were really little I just had a Christmas countdown thing, but when they got a little older I made a fun Advent-ish garland out of Christmas mittens and I would fill them up with little goodies - pieces of candy, little trinkets, fluffy socks, etc. Then one year I got lazy and decided to buy the little house where you open up the little doors each day to reveal a piece of chocolate, and that’s what we’ve done every year since then. Some years we get good ones and some years the chocolate isn’t any good (I’m guilty of buying them based on how cute the little house is). But this year I went a little overboard and got 3: one with German chocolate in it, one with chocolate truffles in it, and one with CHEESE in it. I know the fun of these little calendars is opening the doors to count down the days, but these are actually pretty good - all 3 of them!

And no Christmas would be complete without a few Christmas Eve traditions. The kids get to open one gift on Christmas Eve each year - Christmas jammies! Usually it’s just the girls, but last year the whole family got new coordinating Christmas jammies (gotta love those sales at Old Navy). Before the girls go to bed we read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and then after they’re upstairs, Steve and I hide the pickle ornament (whoever finds the pickle on Christmas morning gets to open the first gift), bring out a few gifts from Santa and load up the stockings before hitting the sack. Since the girls are older now, they don’t wake up at the butt-crack of dawn (I used to tell them they couldn’t get us up til they saw the first bit of daylight outside). They will wake each other up and text us to make sure we’re up (which we usually are - we like to get the dog and cat fed so we can sit there and drink a cup of coffee and watch the lights in the early hours of Christmas morning) so I can get a picture of them on the stairs before they come downstairs. They humor me.