Christmas Traditions and Holiday Memories – Part 2

Merry Christmas! It’s Kara here…if you’re not quite sure who I am – I’m Lori’s daughter and Chic Antiques business partner. Mom and I run The Mill and The Grainery. I’m usually behind the scenes taking care of marketing. If you follow us on Instagram and Facebook – then you’ve heard from me!

Part of our Chic Antiques resolution for 2023 is to be more transparent to give you a real-life glimpse into our lives and business. We are so grateful to all our supporters and will be working hard to provide you with our very best! To kick that off – I’m doing the blog this week and will follow in mom’s footsteps and share some of my favorite holiday memories and traditions.

Christmas Traditions

I’m a new mom – my daughter Junie was born 6 months ago. I have been SO excited about Junie’s 1st Christmas since last Christmas (and really before I even got pregnant). My husband Kyle and I have been really enthusiastic about the “magic” of Christmas coming back to us now that we have our own child. Sadly, that magic can get a bit lost as an adult.

I’m looking forward to sharing traditions with Junie and creating new ones.

One tradition that I look forward to continuing is adopting a family for the holidays. Over the last few years, we have selected a family from a local organization (Lighthouse of Oakland County) to give gifts to. My siblings and I used to buy gifts for each other but realized it would be more special to give to another family that can’t afford a nice Christmas. I love the idea of including Junie in this tradition in the years to come.

Cookie decorating also tops the list of favorite Christmas Traditions. Last year we bought a cookie kit from The Almont Baking & Donut Co., right by the Mill. We talked about how we were so excited to have Junie join us in this tradition. Now she is here and we can’t wait for her to be able to “decorate” with us.

Holiday Decorating

Artificial or Real? Growing up, my parents always had a real one and that is one of the reasons I now have an artificial tree! I couldn’t stand helping to put the lights on a real tree and the mess drives me nuts. I do miss the smell, though. Thankfully there is a candle for that!

There are more ornaments on our tree now. But this single ornament was the only one on there for a couple of weeks!

The tree is a beautiful focal point in our home, but our family stockings are my favorite decoration

10 years ago, my husband Kyle and I bought our personalized stockings. We couldn’t wait to get one for Junie. Thankfully, we were able to find one that was really similar all these years later.

I have three siblings so that was a lot of presents under the tree growing up. My mom had us open our stocking presents first (my favorite) to see what wrapping paper we had. Then we would go look for all the presents with the same wrapping paper as our stocking presents. This way she didn’t have to make tags for every single gift. As I said, there were a lot.

That was one of my favorite things mom did — I mean Santa. It was so fun to see what paper we had that year and then go find all of our presents. I have always imagined doing the same thing with my kids one day.

A Favorite Recipe

Of course, the holidays are filled with family time and food! I didn’t come up with this recipe but I have made these for the last couple of years and plan to make them again this year. They’re the perfect appetizer, really easy to make, and can be made ahead of time.

Cranberry Pecan Goat Cheese Truffles ~ Recipe from thenovicechefblog.com

** Don’t be scared off by the goat cheese — it’s mixed with cream cheese and not too “goaty”, as my older brother once said about something else I made with goat cheese that WAS too goaty.