Five Things Vol. 20

January 15, 2020 in Home

Confession: This post is super overdue (like two months overdue)!! As you know, I always publish my “Five Things” posts to reflect on my favorite things from the previous month. Accordingly, this post should have gone up in January. I’m documenting here that it is going up on March 5 but, to avoid things being drastically out of order chronologically, I’m going to back date it for publishing to fit in with the flow of things a little bit better. I was in a funk in January, and although December was lovely for us, I just didn’t get this one up in time. Whoops. Without further delay, here is my Five Things post for December 2019.

1. Christmas Decor

I love decorating our home for the holidays. Christmas is really the only holiday I go all out and decorate for. It’s so fun and gives the coziest feel for watching all those Hallmark Christmas movies. I did a roundup of our Christmas home decor here if you want to go back and check that out.

2. GLOW Nashville

This is a new experience for the city and had a lot of hype this year. It didn’t disappoint. Admission wasn’t the cheapest, but there are tons of lights and lots of things you can do and see once inside. The Santa set up for kids is amazing and pictures with Santa is free with admission. Honestly, I feel like pictures with Santa are so expensive these days anyways that this was worth it for me haha. We went with some of good friends and their sweet, little girl. She is 11 months younger than Bodie and we joked that this was their first official date.

3. Early Christmas Celebration

My parents came up for a few days the week before Christmas. If you didn’t know, my dad is a pastor down in Alabama so he does Christmas Eve service each year. While he plans to miss some in the future here and there to come up and celebrate with us on the actual days of Christmas, this year they were staying put. It was fun to have them in town for a few days and get do a double celebration!

4. New Christmas Traditions

This was the first year that we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in our own home. We have always traveled between families for Christmas, but had said that once we had kiddos we wanted to start doing that celebration in our own home as much as possible. We did Christmas Eve service at our church and then spent our time at home doing “Santa” with Bodie and giving our gifts to each other. We went up to Luke’s parents house for the afternoon and night (25-26) to celebrate with his family. It was sweet to start a few of our own traditions as our little family of three (plus Harper) in our home.

5. Peppermint Bark

This is one of my favorite treats to make around the holidays. Luke loves it and I enjoy making it. It’s super easy and very delicious. Perfect for boxing up for the neighbors, taking to parties, or just keeping around the house to snack on while watching Hallmark movies. Here’s the recipe:

Peppermint Bark

Ingredients:
~Chocolate Almond Bark
~Vanilla Almond Bark
~Crushed Andes Mint pieces (buy pre-crushed or crush yourself)

Instructions:
~Melt the chocolate almond bark chunks and spread across a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Place in fridge to harden up (just while you’re melting the vanilla).
~Melt the vanilla almond bark chunks and spread on top of hardened chocolate slab.
~Sprinkle crushed Andes mint pieces on top.
~Place the entire slab back in fridge to harden up completely for 30 minutes to an hour.
~Break into chunks and enjoy!

*I use a double boiler method to melt the almond bark, but you can do it in the microwave if you prefer.
*Tastes best if you store in the fridge. The chilled chocolate mint flavor is the best!

*Bonus content that needs to be shared. I got up early on the morning of the 22nd to go hunting with Luke on his 30th birthday. I feel like that deserves to be documented as I don’t expect it to happen again any time soon (and neither should he haha). I spent a lot of my time in the tree stand sleeping, but points to me for getting up at 5:30 am in twenty degree weather and going out there, right?!