Looking for a holiday entertaining guide to help you get ready for the Christmas season? Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites is filled with seasonal recipes, decorating ideas, holiday entertaining tips, and plenty of inspiration for hosting your family and friends at home.
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When I think about my favorite Christmas memories, they’re the ones spent gathered around the table with family, sharing good food and lots of laughs, along with the traditions we look forward to every year.
And in a funny way, that same love of holiday entertaining is where the story behind Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites begins.
How Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites Came to Be
It all started with a holiday party. My friend Missy from Sonata Home Design and I hosted a Holiday Open House at her home here in Lincoln for family and friends.
We spent months planning every detail, starting with the menu.
We served several festive holiday appetizers, including grape jelly and BBQ meatballs, and one of my favorites, cranberry and feta pinwheels.
I also made homemade herb dip with fresh veggies and an edible fruit wreath paired with creamy fruit dip.
And what’s a holiday party without a little meat and cheese? So we also put together a Christmas charcuterie board for everyone to snack on throughout the evening.
Missy’s home was already beautifully decorated for Christmas, and we added a few extra touches for the party, including a drink station and plenty of twinkling lights to make everything feel extra merry.
We also put together swag bags with handmade ornaments and simmer pot kits, and because we couldn’t resist, we added a few fun giveaways, too.
By the time the night was over, we were already talking about how much fun we’d had.
But there was one thing we kept coming back to…we wished we could share that same holiday spirit with the friends and community we’ve built online who couldn’t join us in person.
One conversation led to another, and before long, we had an idea.
What if we could share our love of holiday entertaining with even more people and, in a way, bring our Holiday Open House right to you? That’s when the idea for our digital book, Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites, was born.
We spent months writing, designing, photographing, and curating seasonal recipes, decorating ideas, hosting tips, and Christmas traditions. The result is an 82-page holiday entertaining guide that we’re so excited to share!
A Little About Us
Like so many things these days, our friendship started online.
Missy and I first connected through blogging and quickly discovered that we had a lot in common, including our love of decorating and entertaining. And not only that, but Missy taught at the same high school as my husband, Kirk…talk about a small world!
A few years ago, we both found ourselves going through some pretty big life changes. After more than 35 years in education, Missy retired from teaching and was able to focus on blogging full-time, while I left my 9-to-5 career as an event planner to take a chance on my little business, too.
With both of us suddenly working from home, our online friendship quickly became a real-life one.
Since then, there’s been plenty of coffee dates, texts, brainstorming sessions, and lots of laughs as we’ve navigated running our own businesses and wearing no less than 10 different hats on any given day…marketer, copy editor, photographer, social media manager…you get the idea.
And now we can add writing a book to that list!
Cheers to New Adventures
Of course, taking on this new adventure together made it even more fun. After all, as the saying goes, two heads are better than one!
While we have a lot in common, we each bring our own style and ideas to the table. I think you’ll see a little bit of both of us throughout Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites, from the recipes and decorating ideas we share to our favorite hosting tips and personal Christmas stories.
In a lot of ways, the book feels like an extension of that first Holiday Open House. It’s our way of inviting you in, sharing some of our favorite things about the season, and hopefully giving you a few new ideas for celebrating Christmas in your own home.
What’s Inside Our Holiday Entertaining Guide
We packed all 82 pages of our digital holiday entertaining guide with recipes, decorating ideas, hosting help, and plenty of Christmas inspiration.
Here’s a little peek at what you’ll find inside.
Festive Bites
It probably won’t surprise you that we dedicated an entire chapter to one of my favorite things about the holiday season…the food.
We’re sharing festive sips, savory appetizers, and decadent desserts that are perfect for everything from a holiday party or Christmas dinner to a girls’ night or a cozy evening at home, snuggled up in your jammies watching your favorite holiday movies.
Holiday Decorating
Of course, there’s plenty of Christmas decorating inspiration too.
We’re sharing tips for choosing a holiday color palette and carrying it throughout your home, along with a step-by-step guide to decorating your Christmas tree from start to finish.
Whether you pull out the same favorite decorations every year or like to change things up from season to season, you’ll find plenty of ways to make your home feel festive for Christmas
Planning & Prep
If there’s one thing I learned during my years as an event planner, it’s that hosting is a lot more enjoyable when you have a plan.
In this chapter, we’re sharing some of our best holiday entertaining tips, including how to plan your menu, prep your home for guests, and create a hosting timeline that helps you stay on track without trying to do everything at once.
You’ll also find our bonus 8-Week Countdown to Christmas, with simple weekly tasks to help you get a head start on the holiday season.
Ready to see it all for yourself? Take a closer look at Twinkling Lights & Festive Bites and grab your copy HERE.
Stories of Christmas
This chapter is a little different from the rest, and it might just be one of my favorites.
Missy and I each share some of our favorite Christmas memories and family traditions, from the ones we grew up with to those we still look forward to with our own families today.
For me, that meant taking a little trip down memory lane to Christmases spent at my grandparents’ farms and family rides in our minivan listening to A Chipmunk Christmas on cassette tape.
And because no holiday story would be complete without food, there are plenty of those memories too, including some of the special meals and dishes that are still part of our family Christmases today.
How We Created Our Holiday Entertaining Guide
Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites went through plenty of edits and changes along the way, and trust me, we had more than enough ideas to fill another book or two (hint, hint…stay tuned!).
But one thing we were always clear on was that we wanted to create a guide to help you plan and prepare for the holidays, not just this year, but for many seasons to come.
With that in mind, Missy and I were very intentional about what made the final cut, choosing recipes, decorating tips, and hosting advice that would be helpful whether you’re planning a holiday party, decorating your home for Christmas, or looking for new traditions to add to your family’s celebration.
And since our holiday entertaining guide is digital, you can save it to your computer, tablet, or phone and pull it up whenever you need it.
We also included clickable links throughout the book, so it’s easy to find even more recipes, decorating tips, and holiday inspiration.
Make Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites Part of Your Christmas
Whether you’re hosting Christmas this year or just looking for a few new recipes, decorating tips, or holiday ideas, we hope you’ll enjoy Twinkling Lights and Festive Bites as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
More than anything, we hope our digital holiday entertaining guide feels a little bit like pulling up a chair with us and talking about all things Christmas…what we’re making, how we’re decorating, what we’re doing to get ready, and the holiday traditions we look forward to year after year.
Ready to take a peek inside?
You can grab your copy of Twinkling Lights & Festive Bites HERE and start planning and preparing for the holiday season. Have a question about the book? Drop it in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to answer it!
Merry Christmas and happy hosting!
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