Tag: pecan pie

It’s no secret… We love celebrating big, and the holidays are no exception to that! I know it’s popular these days to slow down and simplify everything so you don’t lose sight of what Christmas is all about, but we have loved filling our days with holiday activities, creating new traditions and watching our kids truly enjoy the magic of the season. We thought it would be fun to give you a peek into our holiday home and share some of the traditions, old and new, that are special to our little family.

Part 1: Trimming the Tree

I’ve always loved decorating for Christmas. Even as a college student I chose to spend my money on Christmas decorations rather than buying required text books for classes; a decision I still fully stand behind! With every tree we set up and every garland we hang, the joy of the season seems to fill our home even more.

One of our traditions is to hand-make the garland on our tree. Over the years we have done everything from paper chains to even making a garland out of paper clips and fancy tape! This year we chose to make a classic popcorn garland. While slightly tedious, we found it relaxing and enjoyable, especially with a holiday movie playing in the background. If you want to give this garland a try here are a few tips we learned along the way: Pop your popcorn the day before you want to make the garland, so it can become stale and more styrofoam like. This makes the popcorn more firm and less likely to crumble. Use a sharp needle threaded with fishing line, and only work with four to five foot sections at a time. Also, make sure to leave enough fishing line at the end of each garland section so you can tie the ends together as you place it on the tree. It takes a little bit of patience, but it really was fun to see it all come together.

Part 2: A Tree of Their Own

I love having multiple trees throughout our home. When Jamie and I lived in a 632 square foot apartment, I somehow managed to squeeze eight Christmas trees into that tiny space. Out of control? Maybe a little, but the more the merrier right? With that mindset, we added a new tradition this year of decorating small trees for each of our kids in their own room. Grey has decorated, undecorated and redecorated his tree more times than I can count, and I just love watching his creativity blossom. He picked out his own ornaments and has clear opinions about where each one should be placed. I think we have a budding wedding designer on our hands!

London’s tree is filled with everything pink and girly to match her room. Each time we turn on the tree lights when she wakes up, she’ll wave and point to her tree and say “wow”. So until she has a voice and an opinion to tell us otherwise, we are really enjoying all the pink that has entered our home since she was born!

Part 3: All Decked Out 

In the same way that we deck the halls for the holiday and make our home a little fancy, we also love to get a little dressed up throughout the season. While I fear some might think this is pretentious, that is really not our heart behind it. Dressing up is not something that happens on a normal day, so getting all decked out feels special and makes this time of year feel even more extraordinary.

We started yet another new tradition this year. Every year we are going to get dressed up and head to downtown Seattle for a family date. This year we went to an interactive concert for little kids at the Seattle Symphony and then we stayed at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel where we visited the Teddy Bear Suite, enjoyed a classic holiday tea in the Georgian Room and then visited Santa. It was such a special day for our family and the start of a beautiful tradition I am excited to see unfold each year. I think my favorite part was when Grey discovered that his personal tea sandwich tower also had macarons on it, he declared at the top of his lungs (for all to hear!) “It’s a macaron Da-Da!”  Meanwhile my 10 month old baby quietly sat next to me delighted to be eating her own scone.

We also continued our annual tradition of hosting a dress up holiday party. I started doing this in college for all of my friends. Instead of studying for my finals, I would spend the week baking and preparing for my big Christmas party at the end of the week. I loved spoiling them with abundant food, desserts and drinks. It was my gift to my friends, and a way to cultivate a deeper sense of community by using my talents and passions to serve the people I love and care about. Eighteen years later, our holiday party looks a little different, but the heart and purpose behind it has not changed and it remains one of my favorite holiday traditions that I look forward to each year.

In keeping with the tradition I mentioned earlier in this post, we also made our lunaria garlands. I’ve been a bit obsessed with lunaria as of late; I love how natural it is while still feeling ethereal and whimsical. I had a pile of it left over from a wedding, so I decided to put it to good use in our home for the holidays. We created the garlands by cutting down the lunaria bundles into smaller bundles, and then taping them together with classic masking tape. We then taped those little lunaria bundles to a long piece of wire, overlapping one bundle on top of the next until we reached the length we needed. This was also a bit tedious and time consuming, but worth the results. We didn’t put many ornaments on our tree this year as we loved the statement of simplicity that the lunaria made.

Part 4: Let Them Eat Cake… and cookies and every other treat! (in moderation of course)

We love to bake. It’s almost therapeutic to me… well until I see all of the dishes I need to wash! During the holidays, we make marshmallows, caramels, pies, cakes in addition to rolling out countless sugar cookies and gingerbread men. Another yearly tradition for us is to host our friends for a cookie making party. It might take months to clean up the last of the sprinkles that fall to the floor, but it is totally worth it for the joy that comes from what we create together!

This year we are sharing our soft gingerbread cookie recipe. It is absolutely the best! You can control how crisp your cookies become by adjusting how long you bake them, so make sure to experiment with your first round! You also need to think ahead. This recipe is best when you let the dough rest in the fridge overnight before rolling them out. I have found this to be the perfect recipe for the holidays and we hope you enjoy it too!

Whatever your traditions may be and no matter what holidays you choose to celebrate, our family wishes you a season filled with joy, love, laughter and perhaps a few gingerbread cookies.

photos: Alanna Maria Photography

calligraphy and recipe design: LaHappy

download and print our gingerbread cookie recipe

I’ve received multiple messages asking about Jamie’s pie recipes, and so we thought we would post a few quick links to her recipes here on our blog to make your holiday baking a bit easier! We’ve enjoyed putting together these pie tutorials and recipes, and have tried to equip our readers with a guide for holiday baking success!  We hope that you enjoy these recipes as much as we do!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Crust Recipe and Tutorial

Pecan Pie Recipe and Tutorial

Pumpkin Pie Recipe and Tutorial

Apple Pie Recipe 

Steve and I recently moved into our new home. With our first baby’s arrival rapidly approaching, we needed a larger space than our 663 square feet. We didn’t have a ton of time to move as we were still in the thick of our busy wedding season. It was a whirlwind of scrambling to pack everything up, unloading into the new house and then returning our focus back on finishing our weddings for the year. We spent the next month living out of boxes, digging through messes every day and struggling to remember and find where we had put our shoes. The shoe thing seemed to cause a lot of frustration in this house the first few weeks.

It’s only been in the last few days that we have had the time to finish unpacking boxes, paint a few rooms, hang photos on the walls and feel more settled here. I think what really made this house feel like our home was when we fired up the oven for the first time to bake. There’s nothing better than the scent of baking cookies, cake, or pie permeating each room. We still have more walls to paint, boxes to unpack and a nursery to finish setting up, but for one day we hit the pause button, got cozy and enjoyed the smell and taste of browned-butter pecan pie.

This pie is one of my favorites to make. It’s beautiful, tasty and relatively easy for any pie baker. It was actually one of the first pies I ever made. My personal problem with Thanksgiving baking is that I tend to underestimate how much work and how long everything will take me, thinking I can make all the pastry, prep the fillings and bake multiple varieties of pie in just a few hours. Luckily, the browned-butter pecan pie is always one that I tend to fall back on when I start to get tired and just need something a bit more simple.

The pie can be made in any kind of pie plate. I’ve been experimenting with tart pans and quiche pans lately, too. The nice thing about using a tart pan is that there’s no need to decorate or really do much of anything with the crust’s edges. The pastry can simply be sculpted into the pan, flush to the edge and trimmed right off. A gentle roll over with a rolling pin gives a nice quick and easy trim to the edge of the tart pan.

I like to decorate the top of my pie with pecan halves to give it a finished look. Before I do anything with this pie, I usually start the preparation by sorting through my pecans to pull out the most perfect looking ones and keep them on reserve for the top. When placing the pecans, be sure to put them nice and close together, and almost overlapping as they shift a bit during the time in the oven.

Now it’s time for me to get back in the kitchen and get moving on my Thanksgiving baking for tomorrow, so I’m not up all night. Happy Thanksgiving and I hope you enjoy my favorite pecan pie recipe!

Download and print our recipe for Browned-Butter Pecan Pie and Perfect Pie Dough

Photography:  Matthew Land Studios 

Recipe Card and Calligraphy: Libby Tipton