It's Christmas! Day 25: Drive Around and Look at Lights

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

I had a post planned for yesterday. It was a craft. However, you know how the holidays go. I never got around to making it. Well, I made half of it, but I never finished it. So, instead of stressing myself out, I decided to just let it go. Because sometimes, that's what we have to do in order to keep our sanity as parents.

So anyway, today is Christmas! Eek! Hopefully, your holiday season has been amazing and continues to be amazing. Unfortunately, today is my last Christmas post. But I’ve saved yet another favorite holiday tradition for last. Now, we normally do this on the 23rd or 24th, but this is something you can do on Christmas night or probably even the whole week after.

We got our PJs on, made our hot cocoa, and got in the car to drive around town looking at all the beautiful Christmas lights.
I made a list of all the houses that traditionally have awesome displays. We were super excited to see all the beautiful displays.

We had a great time!

This is just such a fun little tradition that we have that doesn’t require any planning (unless you’re hunting for the best houses around). It doesn’t cost anything (except maybe some gas). And it’s a bunch of fun that you can have with your family in the days leading up to Christmas. Now get out there and go look at those lights!

I'm going to take a little break from blogging to enjoy some time with my family so I'll see you guys all in the New Year.

So for the last time this year, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 23: Decorating Cookies

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Yesterday, we made our delicious sugar cookies. We also made a half batch of gingerbread cookies. They're my husband's favorite. Now, it’s time to decorate them! So, what kind of topping are we going to use? Icing? Frosting? Well, we’ve decided to go with frosting.

We decided to use this recipe for our frosting. And personally, I think it's delicious. It's just the right amount of sweet and tastes perfect with the sugar cookies I make.

Now, we're going to pipe our decorations on. Since we only have 1 piping tip, they're all going to look similar, but that's okay. Plus, my son has some pretty cool sprinkles to decorate with so we're going to try to make these cookies look awesome! In fact, he decided that I would do the frosting and he would do the sprinkle details. It was so much fun!

Here's how they turned out!

So don’t just make plain cookies, decorate them to really show Santa what you’ve got.

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 22: Baking Cookies

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Today, we are preparing for Santa’s visit in just a few short days by baking some cookies. We’ve decided to go for the traditional sugar cookies (hopefully decorated beautifully!). But, decorations are for tomorrow. Today, we’re just making the cookies. There is a sugar cookie recipe that I have used multiple times that I love. These taste a lot better than other sugar cookies I’ve had. I mean, not to toot my own horn...but toot toot!

So, first thing’s first, let’s get our supplies together. We’ll need cookie sheets, parchment paper, 1 cup measuring cup, 1 teaspoon measuring spoon, a rolling pin, 2 mixing bowls, whisk, and electric beaters.
Then, we’ll get our ingredients together. We’ll need flour, baking powder, unsalted butter, sugar, an egg, and vanilla extract.

First we’re going to whisk together 3 cups of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.
In a separate bowl, we’re going to beat together 1 cup of unsalted butter and 1 cup of sugar. Then, we’re going to add in an egg and some vanilla and then mix it up again.
Now, we’re going to slowly add in the flour mixture about a cup at a time. We want to mix our dough until it begins to clump together (possibly not using all the flour).
Then, we’re going to gather up our dough and knead it with our hands until it’s nice and smooth. We’re going to roll it into a ball, wrap it with plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge for about half an hour to chill. You want it to be a little firm, but not hard.
It’s time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees, take our dough out of the fridge, and roll it out. We’re going to cut shapes out with cookie cutters and place those on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Then, we’re going to place these in the freezer for just a couple minutes to make sure they don’t lose their shape while they’re in the oven.
We’re just going to pop these in for about 8 minutes and just check on them from there. Cooking time will depend on the size and thickness of your cookies.

Now that these are done, we’re going to let them cool overnight. Come back tomorrow to decorate them with us! And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 21: Wrapping Christmas Presents PLUS Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Ok, I have a confession to make. While I absolutely love Christmas and do consider myself pretty crafty, no matter how hard I try, I stink at wrapping presents. Like seriously, I try every year, but it’s just not that pretty. I don’t know what to tell you. So, I’ve decided to embrace the bad wrapping and have my son help me. That way, if anyone says anything, he wrapped them. Yeah, I know, I totally am throwing my son under the bus. Oh well.

Let’s get wrapping!

Phew! That was exhausting and felt like it took forever! But now it’s done. Want to see? Here are our presents, ready to be opened on Christmas morning!

Now that we're done wrapping presents, it's time to make some hot chocolate. But we're not going to make it for ourselves. Remember when we made our neighbors some gift baskets? Well, inside them, we placed some jars of hot cocoa mix, so today, we're going to show you what went into those.

First, we grabbed 4 16 oz glass jars.
We added our ingredients to each jar in even layers.
First is 1/3 cup of sugar.
Then, 1/3 cup of cocoa powder.
Next up is a layer of finely crushed candy canes (3 to be exact).
Then, 1/3 cup of mini chocolate chips.
Finally, we top our jar with 1/2 cup of mini marshmallows.

Tips:
- Add candy canes to a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to finely crush.

- Use a funnel to prevent spills and ensure even layers. Build a wide-mouth funnel by rolling paper into a cone and taping it in place.

Now that we're done filling our jars, we're going to screw on the lid, add a gift tag with instructions, and top it with a bow.

This is what our tags said:

Peppermint Hot Cocoa
You will need:
1 jar cocoa mix
6 cups milk

Steps:
1. Remove marshmallows from jar. Set aside.
2. Whisk cocoa mix and milk in pot set over medium heat until hot.
3. Pour into 4 mugs and top with marshmallows.

Don’t leave your wrapping until Christmas Eve. And make some homemade hot cocoa to share!

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 20: DIY Decor

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Today, we are making some DIY decor. I know this is supposed to be all about Christmas, but technically, this craft is not Christmas related. However, for me, it kind of is. This is a present that I will be gifting to someone. That being said, you could easily use more "Christmassy" colors for your sign and have it say "Merry Christmas" instead to make it a Christmas decor item. So, let’s get started.

First, we need to gather our supplies. We’ll need a wooden sign with frame. I got mine at Hobby Lobby. I used my 40% coupon and snagged this one for under $14. It measures just under 2 feet by 16 inches. We’ll also need some vinyl, a Cricut machine, some transfer paper, a hot glue gun, ribbon, and some greenery.

First, we’re going to make and cut the design we’ve chosen with our Cricut. My dad is redoing a home in North Carolina and wanted some decor for when he goes to sell it, so I’m making this sign to gift him that he can just leave there. The design I was making was larger than my 12-inch mat could handle. If you have a 24-inch mat, you'll be fine, but I don't have one so I had to break my design into two pieces before cutting.

I am now going to put my design on my transfer paper and then carefully try to transfer my design to the wood. I actually messed this part up and put it on crooked, but I did my best to save it.

We want to now add some greenery to the top of our sign to make it look nice. Since I made a sign that has North Carolina on it, I decided to use dogwood since it’s the state flower. I’m just going to hot glue it into place and then add a bow to cover our hot glue spots.

After that’s done, we’re ready! It’s time to gift this piece and hope it makes the home a little brighter.

Never stop creating!

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 19: Making Christmas Candy

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

In years past, we’ve made all different kinds of Christmas candy. From peppermint bark to chocolate peanut clusters, we’ve made it all. However, this year, we’re trying to eat healthier and be more conscious of our calorie intake. But that doesn’t mean that we need to eliminate all Christmas candy. So, we’ve limited it to just one kind this year.

This candy means a lot to me because my grandma used to make it. And since she’s not around anymore, it’s up to me to carry on the tradition. Plus, this is the candy that we put in our neighbor gift baskets.

So, we’re going to get started.
First, we need our supplies. We’re going to gather our double boiler, pot, spatula, wax paper, cookie sheet, 1 cup and ½ cup measuring cups, and a small scoop.
Now for our ingredients, we’re going to get 1 lb of almond bark, peanut butter, crisp rice cereal, dry roasted peanuts, and mini marshmallows.

We’re going to fill our pot with water, making sure it JUST touches the bottom of the double boiler and then put it on medium heat.
Let your water heat up for a couple minutes, about 5, and then we’re going to add our almond bark. Our goal now is just to get it melted. This will probably take a bit of time, but we want to melt it slow so as to not add too much heat.

After our almond bark is at a smooth consistency, it’s time for us to add our other ingredients. First, we’ll add 1/2 cup of peanut butter and mix that up really well. Then we’re going to add 1 1/2 cups of crisp rice cereal and 1 cup of dry roasted peanuts. Again, we want to mix that up.
Then, we’re going to add 1 cup of mini marshmallows. We want to stir that quickly and get our scoop to portion out our candies because we don’t want the marshmallows to melt.
As we scoop out our portions, we put them on wax paper and allow them to cool.
That’s it! Now that our candies have cooled for about half an hour, they’re ready to eat. And these don’t last very long in my house.

I hope you enjoy. And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas.

It's Christmas! Day 18: Make a neighbor gift basket PLUS Chocolate Snowball Cookies

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

The most important part about Christmas is giving. Whether you’re giving thanks, giving presents to your family, giving money to charity, giving toys to kids in need, or just giving a little Christmas cheer to other people, you’re truly embracing the true meaning of Christmas. In my house, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and talk about being kind and how God has given so much to us. However, whether you live in a religious household or not, giving is such an important lesson to learn.

So, while we do try to do multiple things to give back during the holiday season (like ringing bells for the salvation army or random acts of kindness), today we’re talking about making a gift basket for a couple neighbors. We want to spread some Christmas cheer and make our friends feel special.

There were a couple things we needed to consider.
Will people actually eat cookies if we make them? (You know, due to this whole Covid thing.)
How much do we want to spend?
Who do we want to make gift baskets for?

After we answered these questions, we got to putting our baskets together. We included some homemade chocolate cookies, homemade candy, a jar of homemade hot cocoa mix, some finger puppets, a couple crafts, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, stickers, and notebooks.

Here's how we made the cookies that we ended up including:

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups + 1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Steps:
1. Add flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt to medium bowl. Mix to combine. Set aside.
2. Add butter and 1 1/4 cups sugar to large bowl. Beat with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Crack eggs into small bowl. Throw away shells and wash your hands.
4. Add eggs and vanilla to butter mixture. Mix until smooth and creamy.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Mix until a soft dough forms.
6. Cover dough and refrigerate 1 hour.
7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
8. Scoop a level tablespoon of dough. Roll into a 1-inch ball. Repeat to use all cookie dough.
9. Add 1/3 cup sugar to one small bowl. Add powdered sugar to another small bowl.
10. Make snowballs! Dip each ball of dough in sugar, then dunk generously in powdered sugar to coat.
11. Set dough on baking sheets.
12. Bake 10 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Serve.

I think they turned out pretty good! And they taste delicious!

Owen had a blast running up to their houses and putting our little gifts on their front porch!

So do something kind for someone else!

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 17: DIY Gifts PLUS an easy DIY for your kids

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

One very necessary part of Christmas is gift giving. With online shopping (hello, Amazon!), picking out gifts for people is easier than ever. Most of my family have wishlists that I can shop from. However, sometimes, I like to add a little something extra. Today, we’re talking DIY gifts.

I have a lot of crafting hobbies, but my main one is crochet. Here are the gifts I made for people this year.
I made a pocket shawl for my mother-in-law.

A couple cherry pie pot holders for my parents.

An astronaut for my son.

A Mandolorean ornament for my husband.

A small Dobby (you know, from Harry Potter) for a Secret Santa gift.

And Ron Weasley (again, from Harry Potter) for another Secret Santa gift.

My husband and I have recently gotten into 3D printing in the past year, so we made a couple gifts with that this year, too.
For my Secret Santa gift, I made a Ravenclaw bookmark and a spinning deathly hallows pendant.

I also made a Gryffindor bookmark for my other Secret Santa gift.

I plan to make a couple more things before Christmas, but I'm almost out of time!

Now, for the reason you’re really here, my son and I are going to show you how to make an awesome DIY gift that he made for his grandma and grandpa.

We made candle art! First, you need to cut a piece of tissue paper that just fits on your candle.
Then, draw whatever you want on this piece of tissue paper with markers. I had my son think about things his grandparents like and things he likes to do with them.

When you're done coloring, cut a piece of wax paper that fits around your candle, but is about 6 inches longer.
Put your tissue paper in place on the candle, wrap the wax paper around it, and hold onto that extra bit of wax paper while you carefully use a hairdryer to melt the tissue paper into the candle.

Not all gifts need to be bought from a store. They mean so much more and I get so much more excited to give them when I've put time and effort into the gift. Seriously! Try it!

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 16: Read Christmas Books

It’s Christmas! is a 5 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

One way to really embrace the Christmas spirit is to read Christmas books. We of course have our favorites. We always read “Twas the night before Christmas” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on Christmas Eve. So clearly we haven’t read those books yet. However, there are a couple books we have already read.

I homeschool my son and we have a Read Aloud time every day so it’s easy to find time for Christmas books. But you could easily read your books before bedtime.

Here are some of our favorites this year:
The Grinch (a novelization of the Jim Carey version)
Llama Llama Holiday Drama
The Gingerbread Man Loose at Christmas
How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas
The Little Christmas Elf
The First Christmas Night

One of my favorite parts about reading to my son is the quality time we get to spend together. So never stop reading to your kids!

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 15: Lowe's Kids Workshop Kit

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Over the past couple of years, we have taken our son to SO MANY Home Depot and Lowe’s workshops. My son loves them! There’s just nothing like building something with your own hands and having a finished product to play with in the end.

Well, lately, we haven’t been doing them as often. First of all, our Home Depot is always out of the projects and we just can't seem to get the timing right. So if we want one, we have to buy it online, which we have ordered a couple of, but when you can get them for free, it just feels different. Lowe’s quit doing them for a while, but recently started back up during the pandemic. With both of these, though, you just pick them up and complete the projects at home.

For December, I believe there is an ornament project and a cookie platter project with Home Depot that you can order for about $5 each. However, we chose to do the Lowe’s project. I signed my son up online, my husband went to pick up the project on the 12th (but they didn't ask for our name so I'm not sure why we had to sign up), and then my son put it together. Here is his Christmas train!

So, if you've got the time and are able to, get out there and build something!

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 14: Game Night

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

During the busy Christmas season, we always try to find a night to just have some good old-fashioned fun. How do we do that? Game Night! We have a little bookshelf where we keep all of our games. Well, most of our games. Our bookshelf is currently bulging and we can’t fit all of our games in it.

On game night, sometimes it’s just our family of 3. And sometimes, we are able to have other people over to enjoy game night with us. During the pandemic, we haven’t been able to have very many people over since we’re trying to keep our bubble pretty small. That being said, there are a few people that we’ve included in our bubble to keep ourselves sane.

Anyway, we normally choose 2 or 3 games to get out and play. This time, we chose Clue and Pay Day. We had a blast just playing games just the 3 of us.

So, make sure you’re taking time for fun and playing with your kids.

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 13: Grinch Night

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Sometimes, you just need to snuggle up with your kiddos and have a movie night. Well, one way to make that even more fun is to do it under a blanket fort. We transformed our entire living room in our basement into a giant blanket fort where we ate food and watched a Christmas movie. We usually make much smaller forts, but decided to make a huge one this time so that we could all fit under it, including our dog. So, what movie did we watch? Well, the Grinch, of course! We ended up only having enough time to watch the 1966 and the 2000 version with Jim Carey so I was told that we're going to need a second Grinch night in order to watch the 2018 movie and the musical version. So I guess be on the lookout for that.

To make it even more special, we didn't just have a regular dinner, we made a Grinch-themed smorgasbord. We had Grinch chips and salsa, Grinch kebabs (grape, slice of banana, strawberry, mini marshmallow), a veggie tray Christmas tree, and pretzel bites (made with mint truffle and dark chocolate kisses and either a red or green MnM on top). Everything was delightful!

To make the pretzel bites, we layed out a bunch of pretzels, placed kisses on top of them, baked them for 4 minutes at 250 degrees, smooshed an MnM on top right after they came out of the oven, and then threw them in the fridge to cool for about 30 minutes. Since we decided to use 2 different kinds of kisses, we put green MnMs on top of the mint truffle kisses and red MnMs on top of the dark chocolate ones. That way, we could keep them straight while eating them. We did learn that the mint truffle kisses melt A LOT faster than the dark chocolate ones so if we make these again in the future, we're only going to put them in the oven for 2 minutes.

I want to hear from you, today. What kind of fun holiday traditions do you have with your family? What are your favorite movies to watch together? Let me know in the comments.

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 12: Seeing Santa

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Going to see Santa is something we’ve done every year since my son was born. At first, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to even take the risk involved with my son seeing Santa. In fact, I had basically decided it wasn’t going to happen. Then, I saw an ad on Facebook for Bass Pro Shop’s Santa Experience. It looked like a really good option with all the precautions they were taking. So, I talked about it with my husband and he approved. My next step was to talk to my son. He was honestly so excited that we had found a way for him to still see Santa. We made sure to set his expectations at a realistic level. You’re not going to sit on Santa’s lap. Instead, you’re going to sit on a wooden bench in front of him. There will also be a plexiglass wall between you and Santa. You can still talk to him, though. You might just have to talk a little louder since you'll be standing 6 feet away. You’ll need to wear a mask except for when they're taking your picture. And you know what his response was? “So, I’ll still get to see him, talk to him, and take my picture with him?” “Yes.” “Sounds good to me!”

I mean, come on, so proud of his positive attitude.

So, I had to make a reservation in order to see Santa. I believe I saw somewhere that they allow up to 5 families per 15 minute reservation period. However, I’m not 100% sure about that. Reservations are released 7 days prior at midnight. We already knew we wanted to go on a weekday to make sure the crowds in the store wouldn’t be very heavy.

When we got there, we checked in, got our temperature taken, and then waited 6 feet away from the family in front of us. They had a cute little Bass Pro Shop themed 12 days of Christmas thing going on for the 6ft apart place markers. We got there early so we did have to wait a while. And while it didn't feel like they rushed anyone with Santa, we also didn't feel like we waited very long. We also watched the girl sanitize between each group which made us feel better. Overall, our experience with Santa was great! We received our FREE picture, a cute little color-your-own ornament, and a pouch of hot cocoa. I ended up paying $15 online in order to download the picture digitally because I wanted to be able to print it.

So don’t let the pandemic get you down. Whether it's seeing Santa virtually or through a plexiglass wall, don’t miss out on seeing Santa this year.

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 11: Drive-through Lights

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

With all of the uncertainty this year, and so many people not wanting to be in crowds, and the risk of getting sick, one of the safest activities, and one of the most common activities to do for Christmas this year, is going to a drive through lights display. I have seen SO MANY advertised this year. And they come in all price points from free to $75 per vehicle and beyond.

Since drive-through lights are so popular this year, it is possible that some of the ones near you may be sold out if they take reservations. And if they don't take reservations, you might have to wait in line for a while to get in. We had to wait about 45 minutes to get it on a weekday. I can't even imagine how long people wait on a weekend. But you know what the best plan is for all this? Have a good attitude! It's okay if you can't go. Drive through some neighborhoods instead. Or bring games to play while you wait. It's all about your attitude this holiday season. You will have as good of a time as you plan to have.

Anyway, every year, we go to FOLEPI, which stands for Festival of Lights in East Peoria, Illinois. It costs $10 per regular vehicle. We always bring snacks and hot chocolate while we blast the radio station that the lights are timed to while in the comfort of our own car. You can bring pillows and blankets and wear your PJs to really make it the most fun experience. Just sit back and relax!

I just love Christmas lights. This is such a fun experience that we do every year, but we’re especially thankful for it this year.

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!