Friday Faves 12.29 + Christmas recap

Hello buddies! I hope you’ve had a beautiful week. It’s been a beautiful blur between Christmas and New Years, and I’ve loved all of this time with the crew. We’ve loved sluggish mornings, hikes, buying, nails, studying, and flicks. I’m positively not trying ahead to highschool returning, particularly the early morning scramble and hours of homework.

I hope that my buddies who celebrated Christmas this week had an exquisite vacation. My dad and stepmom have been out of city – my step-grandmother handed away. She was so form and great, and I’m grateful we have been blessed to have her in our lives. We had a low-key Christmas Eve at residence with Chinese language takeout and Christmas Chronicles, and I met up with madre for midnight mass. They turned the lights down for Silent Evening and it was the proper method to begin the vacation.

The ladies have been up vivid and early for Santa’a items and stockings, after which the household came visiting for household items, tamales, beans, egg casserole, cinnamon rolls, and the Pilot’s well-known egg nog.

We spent the morning collectively, consuming espresso and eggnog, and exchanging items,

and everybody went residence to relax for just a few hours.

We took a stroll and dropped off cookies to our neighbors. — I bake for 2 weeks in December and freeze every little thing. This fashion, it’’s not worrying and now we have an enormous assortment of goodies for neighbors and vacation cookie trays. These cookies, these cookies, and peppermint bark are all the time on the record.

Then, we had 20 individuals over for Christmas dinner and it.was.every little thing.

Appetizers have been this big cheese board:

(plus a smaller board I positioned on one of many tables for snacking)

Artichoke dip and crackers

ALL the sweets (chocolate bourbon pecan pie, pear pie {that a} buddy introduced over, xmas log, totally different espresso truffles and cookies)

and for dinner, we smoked two giant natural turkeys, two big grass-fed beef tenderloins, made horseradish sauce, gravy, asparagus, salad, and madre introduced over tacky potatoes. The meat was all from ButcherBox and cooked completely on the Traeger.

The hit of the night time was the video games!! I received this concept from a buddies’ Christmas occasion: Saran Wrap Ball! You wrap a ton of goodies right into a ball, after which one particular person unwraps it whereas the particular person subsequent to them rolls two cube (die? I don’t know these items). When that particular person hits doubles, the timer stops, and the ball goes to the subsequent particular person. If the particular person unwraps a mini bottle of alcohol, it’s an possibility for them to take a shot (or hand the mini bottle to a different keen grownup to take the shot for them).

Listed below are among the goodies I wrapped into the ball:

and the completed product:

It was a day filled with enjoyable occasions, good meals, and beautiful items, and as all the time, my favourite half is being with so many individuals we love a lot, on the similar time. I’m so unhappy the vacations are over!!

It’s time for the weekly Friday Faves occasion, however I solely have just a few for ya:

– Wonka. It was SO good; means higher than I anticipated. Hugh Grant is a ten/10 Oompa Loompa.

– This retainer cleaner. I didn’t wish to spend $100 on a Zima, however discovered this one with better reviews and it was solely $40. It made my Invisalign look model new.

– Be part of us for the Healthy Habits Challenge! All the small print are right here. I can’t wait to do that with you.

– The Organifi Shilajit gummies are SO good – I can do a publish on them should you’d like. You can check them out here and that hyperlink will auto-apply the code FITNESSISTA for 20% off.

Sending you needs for a Blissful New Yr and I’ll see ya quickly!
xo