15009 Farmhouse: Christmas on the Farm

Hi everyone,
It's been entirely too long since i have posted anything… I remember just a couple of months ago when i started this blog i was so excited for it to be during the holiday season. I saw endless possibilities, but again the Holidays were here and it was busy. I always do pretty good about starting to shop early, and i try to stay organized with lists and goals for each week, it does help but i have had a lot of events packed into four short weeks. I always intended to do a blog post about each one, but i am going to show you a little bit of everything here…

No matter how busy things get, this picture right here, my beautiful family together, under this beautiful tree is really what it is all about. I may have been a crazy lady the rest of the month running around with cinnamon rolls, cookies, shopping, wrapping, and decorating, but on the afternoon of December 25th, i ate pie (lots of it) played with sweet beautiful babies, hugged my parents, laughed with my siblings and after all of that, I came home with my farmer. It was a very Merry Christmas at this farmhouse.

Every year i dream about Christmas cards that actually have snow. I hold off in early December in hoping for a blanket of white snow. This year, that dream came true…. My sister who was about 7 months pregnant came out on bitterly cold afternoon and snapped these pictures.

Its not exactly a blanket of snow, but the dusting in the field was enough for me. I didn't really want to crop this picture so close, i wanted a little bit of the field in the background, but that particular tractor had a plow hooked up to the back.

Earlier that week, my farmer had been plowing his terraces and it hadn't yet been removed. As much as i appreciate a farmer who keeps his terraces plowed, i was more than happy to crop it from our photo.

This year Christmas has been all about tradition. I am trying to keep old family traditions alive and create new traditions for me and my farmer as well.

I have two beautiful nieces (ages 7 and 9) and every December we get together and bake cookies, do Christmas crafts, order pizza, and drive around and look at Christmas lights.

Baking and Decorating Cookies

We always have hot chocolate and this year i took some little ceramic spoons, melted some chocolate (almond bark), rolled the spoons around in chocolate and added sprinkles. The girls absolutely loved them.

Taping together our Christmas Countdown Chain

Painting ornaments

It was such a great day with them. They look forward to it as well and always have a good time, but every year i think to myself, i wonder how many more times they will think this is cool. For now, they jump into my arms when i walk in the door, and i will choose to believe that will never change, as i tell them all of the time, they were my first two great loves.

When they are here i very rarely partake, i let them do their own thing and i snap photos, chat with them, prep the next project, etc…. So when i dropped them off at Sunday School the next morning i hurried on home and whipped up a batch of cookies for myself to decorate.

If you have never tried William Sonoma's decorating pens, i highly recommend them. They are easy to use and taste amazing (white chocolate)….

It was a fun little creative thing for me to do, and my farmer enjoyed munching on them after dinner.

My farmers dad had a birthday right before Christmas. I baked him some cinnamon rolls early one morning and delivered them to him before work. It's something that i do every year for my own dad on his birthday in April. That's another one of those great traditions.

It turns out he LOVED them. Even compared them to his own mother's that she used to make for him - apparently no one can make anything as good as Grandma Lichte. Of course i was happy that my 5:00 AM project was a hit, and even more so to think that maybe they triggered a great childhood memory. The stories that i have heard about Grandma Lichte always make me sorry that i will never get to know her better. When i do projects on this farm or take on certain "farm wife" roles of taking my farmer things in the field, or make sure that he is taken care of, i can't help but think that she would have really been able to teach me a lot of things. I hope that we, me and my farmer, make her proud. After all, the only reason that we are here is because of the sacrifices that those before us made.

On Christmas Eve i got an itch to bake.. I decided to make a bunch of cinnamon rolls and deliver them to our neighbors, friends, and family.

And…. in true fashion, my favorite part was packaging them them up and putting pretty ribbons and a foil embossed sticker on them.

I hope that you have had a Merry Christmas. Here are a few of my favorite photos from this Christmas season.

Santa always makes a visit every Christmas Eve at my parents house when we get home from Church. Ava and Hailey have just spotted him in the yard. That was fun, Santa is so magical.

My farmer and i on Christmas Eve.

We got my farmers niece and nephews a great sled from LL Bean. Needless to say, i think that they loved it. As i am sitting here looking at snow falling i am thinking about this sled and the memories that they are going to make together.