A Rustic Woodland: Christmas Day 2017

I look forward to Christmas all year and I am very much in denial that I have to wait another year for it to come again. It's such a lovely time- decorated houses, carols on the radio, fires in the fireplace, cookies a plenty, and family getting together to celebrate ( & eat!) It has become tradition in our family that my mother and I host Christmas day while our cousins take charge of Christmas eve and most importantly the seven fishes.

Since Christmas day has become "ours" my mom and I like to do something different every year so we choose a theme of sorts for the day that the meal and decorations will follow. This year we decided our inspiration would be: rustic woodland. It came about because I knew that for our table scape I wanted something natural with tons of pine and candles and my mom knew she would be tired from traveling and wanted to keep the meal simple.

Christmas morning was lovely, as usual. My nana slept over and we exchanged gifts with fresh brewed coffees in hand- a necessity for an 8am morning! After all gifts had been given we sat down to the traditional breakfast of panettone. Anyone who grew up in an Italian household knows (and maybe dreads) this breakfast. This year we opted for a chocolate, cherry panettone and it was delicious!

How great is this vintage inspired wrapping paper?

After breakfast (and some last minute cookie frosting) my mom and I ventured out in our plaid pajamas to gather some greenery for our tablescape. It was quite the adventure and I will spare you the visuals, but it felt like we were in a sitcom traipsing about in the mud with our jammies tucked into our boots and our garden shears at the ready. We had to do some last minute thinking because the runner we had ordered ended up not coming on time so we used brown paper instead. I think it looked great and made for a super easy clean up at the end of the night!

Each table setting had crackers that held a paper crown, a key from a xylophone, and a number. The kit that they came in provided "sheet" music and the point of the game was to eventually have everyone hitting their numbered key at the right time to play a Christmas carol. I think we can all imagine how it turned out. Especially after a big meal...and a couple of glasses of wine.

We started with foie gras & onion jam and a simple cheese board paired with a pear & ginger champagne cocktail.

This was followed by a delicious filet mignon, gratin dauphinois of sweet & white potatoes, and sautéed cabbage with bacon. yum!

Dessert was COOKIES. We set up a sideboard to show them off and make them available to everyone to eat as soon as they came in the door (which they did.) We made my favorite cranberry white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies (see my previous post for the recipe!), linzer cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and tons of variations on gingerbread. We had these gorgeous cookie cutters from our trip to Ghent that looked like their iconic, storybook buildings which we used for the gingerbread cookies along with tree & deer cookie cutters.

That item on the left that looks like a saw blade is chocolate from Belgium! So cool!!

Scroll through for more pictures from the day!

Linzer cookies with raspberry jam & chestnut spread from Belgium.

How cute are these two in their paper crowns?

My cousin had gotten a karaoke machine for Christmas and the night devolved into my uncle taking control of the machine and living out his lost dream of being an emcee, which really meant just saying every thought that came to his head into a microphone with some singing snuck in between his speeches. It made for a lot of fun and I'm sure a lot of home videos to embarass us all in the future.

It was indeed a Merry Christmas for all and for all a good night.