weekly bits #26
the holiday edition: best gifts, what I baked, christmas dinner & finishing our renovation!!!
Haaaaaaapppppy 2026!!!! I’ve missed you dearly over the holiday break. Today’s bits were meant for last Friday, but after a technological disaster and a long, beautiful baby shower weekend with friends from out of town I was thoroughly delayed — not to fret! A new, fresh bits will be out this Friday as well to recap that whole saga, with this particular edition of weekly bits covering the nonsense of the holidays. Sound good? Good.
SO much has happened!!! After a whirlwind run-up to Christmas, we’ve found some little pockets of quiet to ring in the new year and sink into the fate of parenthood that awaits us in not too many weeks now…wild! More on that Friday. I’ve got a packed edition today re-capping our holiday hits for you, including the ever-awaited completion of your renovation. Yes, that’s right. Well…98% completion. Who cares. We moved back into our master & life is grand!!!!!
Let’s get into it…
Well, I spoiled this one. But…our master bed & bath renovation is DONE! Our Christmas hosting was the glaring deadline, given that we needed to, ya know, free up our guest room…but we made it. With the exception of a few towel bars & hooks that need replacing once our new ones arrive (I always end up sourcing things from an Etsy shop in Scandinavia or somewhere with a similarly lengthy shipping time), we made it in the nick of time. So many moments throughout this process I have deeply questioned why on earth we took on so much ourselves with so little previous experience…but hand on heart I am SO happy we did it. The point was learning, and we did, A LOT, and also saving money, which we certainly did, and on top of that, we’re just thrilled with the result. Our house really feels like home now, and I could spend all day long in that room. Mostly I’m just glad you get to stop hearing about it. What a relief. (Though when I properly photograph the ‘after,’ I’ll be sure to share)
In our final days, re-texturizing the new bits of wall to match, before we pulled a wire loose with our shoddy light-fixture rig (not recommended lol) and lost electricity to the whole room the night before we were supposed to move back in. Once we could properly furnish our master for the first time, we did the ole furniture shuffle and ended up with a few gaps throughout the house that we hurried to fill before our guests arrived. This was a genuine pleasure and something we were really looking forward to — an excuse to focus on decor is an excuse I will gladly take any day. Sam and I love nothing more than antique shopping and snagged just about everything secondhand! Quite a few of our newest pieces made it into my yearly round-up of favorite antiques that you can watch here:
One of my favorite parts of hosting Christmas is baking a slew of lovely things I dream of making throughout the year when I have a captive audience. I always prep these cinnamon rolls to be popped into the oven Christmas morning (usually paired with mimosas, an elite combo, though I skipped it this year given the whole pregnancy thing) — they are the best tasting things on the planet, according to everyone, every time. Our lovely family friend Melissa used to bake these around the holidays and share them with us, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I like to round out the offerings with a pie and a tart, past favorites including this cranberry linzer tart I am obsessed with but isn’t the biggest crowd pleaser (it’s a very tart tart!), and a variety of pecan, chocolate chess, or fruit pies. This year I sort of free-styled a mixed berry pie with my favorite all-butter homemade pie crust from Claire Saffitz’ Dessert Person, as Sam, my dad, and my sister-in-law love berry pie, and finally tried out Alison Roman’s caramelized maple tart as the closer to Christmas dinner. Instead of the regular tart crust, though, I actually used the toasted walnut crust featured in the cranberry linzer tart recipe because it’s so good and festive I couldn’t have a Christmas without it. I don’t know if texturally it was a perfect match with the caramelized maple filling, but taste-wise it was divine & sort of made the whole thing feel a bit like a thin, maple-y cheesecake. The filling was 10/10, even though I accidentally made maple sugar the first time I tried caramelizing the maple syrup (don’t remove it from the heat before you add the cream!) — I saved the mishap in a jar of course, and it made a great addition to a homemade holiday latte.
my berry pie + taking a rest during the pre-hosting baking marathon
Below the paywall, a funny pull from my Instagram DMs, my Christmas dinner menu, tales from our holiday board game marathons, top Christmas gifts & more…