New Year // New Start

I don't normally do a lot of reflecting at the end of the year - I'm too ready to look forward, get things done, make some progress already. I wandered around Target this morning, hot coffee in hand, alone, and I started thinking, planning, decorating our home in my head. (Because the new spring Threshold stuff? Awesome!)

I have many things I want to work on in 2014, but at the top of my priority list is hospitality, welcoming friends and family into our house. I naturally lean toward being a homebody, focusing on my kiddos and Brian and our time.

And these things are good, but I want to invite our friends in more often, fill our house with the sounds of kids laughing and music playing and fun times being had. Specifically, I'd like to entertain in some form or fashion once a month in 2014.

My other big focus will be on my photos. I'm going to do a better job of sharing my pictures - both in print and digitally. I have a terrible habit of uploading photos and then leaving them on my computer forever, never to be seen again. Well not anymore! I'm undecided on whether I'll try a photo project again - I've still never completed one - but if I do, then I'm going to make sure it's well displayed - ha!

There's so much more, but right now these things seem easy and fun to me, and I'm not dreading them one bit which is a good place to start for the New Year.

Do you make resolutions? Great goals and plans? What is on your list for 2014?

Christmas at Home

We hosted Christmas Eve dinner at our house this year. Brian's mom was here and my parents came over after our late afternoon church service so we had five adults and our two young kiddos.

I planned the menu last week and grocery shopped Monday morning along with everyone else in town.

Caroline and I were the first to wake Christmas Eve morning and we quietly hid out in the laundry room, ironing placemats and napkins and dressing up dolls.

I spent the day polishing silver, prepping food, making place cards, setting the table so everything would be just so. We served dinner on my nana's Christmas china and dessert on her candlewick plates. My silver is the same pattern she chose all those years ago and the one my mom uses so regularly.

Brian and I bustled in the kitchen while his mom kept the kiddos entertained. I was amazed that the timing all worked out and we sat down to a delicious and cozy dinner of perfectly roasted beef tenderloin, caprese salad, roasted chick peas + pistachios, green beans, and rosemary potatoes (recipe from The Pioneer Woman's new holiday cookbook) with fabulous pies from my mother-in-law for dessert.

Brian said a beautiful Christmas Eve prayer and my mom cried so I felt like we were doing something right!

After dinner we all filed into the family room around the tree, and the kids opened their one present for the night, new coordinating pj's.

Except Andrew's were too big - they were out of his size and the size up were about six inches too long, but he didn't care one bit. He was so excited because Santa was coming! and his family was there! and it was Jesus' birthday! Christmas for a four and a half year old is so very awesome.

And it was pretty awesome for me too. It made me so happy to work hard to create a beautiful table and a tasty dinner to celebrate this holy holiday with our families. This was the first time we have successfully hosted a holiday without my mom having to come rescue my meal - I tried the first Christmas after Caroline was born and it was SO BAD.

This Christmas dinner though, this, made me feel like a real grownup. I have the very best memories of Nana and Pop's and those easy Christmases of my childhood surrounded by our extended families, but the chance to spend a relaxed Christmas at home, in our new home that feels so very us, was really special too.

And I think the kids thought it was pretty special on Christmas morning.

I will never look at this photo and not smile, right?

As per our usual, I will take down the tree and pack away all the Christmas decorations on New Year's Day. It's always a little bittersweet, but I think it may even be more so this year. We've had a really beautiful first Christmas in this house.