This post took a little longer for me to get up than I had anticipated because *holy moly tons of pictures* and *dang puppies make me tired* but I hope you enjoy it! At the end of November, our elf, Finley, made her 2021 debut and returned with a new elf pet, Ginger the reindeer. One of our family’s Christmas traditions is that Finley brings all the makings of a North Pole breakfast when she comes back from the North Pole for the season. She also brings all the kids’ advent calendars every year! This is an idea that I can’t take any credit for – I totally saw it on Andrea at Momfessional’s blog years ago and that’s where I drew my inspiration from. If you think MY breakfast looks nice, go check out hers. She does the most beautiful table decorations with a different theme every year! Mine is not like that 😂 I just kind of go with what I have. I don’t usually have a specific plan in mind before I start putting the North Pole breakfast together, I just look at my stock and wing it. That said, I do love Christmas and started hoard-buying Christmas decor and wrapping back in October … like, before Halloween even happened. So I had some good inventory to work with 🙂 Also, I DID purposefully buy some festive disposable tableware for this breakfast from Meri Meri so that is one item that I did buy for this day. If this is a tradition that you’d like to start with your family and it feels overwhelming, I promise you – it doesn’t have to be. Just make a fun breakfast and scatter some of your tree ornaments around the table and even that will feel special. Trust me!

the night before

Here is what Finley was working with the night before her official return 😉

All we had out was our festive Christmas table runner (from Target! I wanted to link but it’s gone now) but a favorite hack that I learned is to layer wrapping paper on top to get an easy yet festive decoration. I went with this fun Christmas tree & Santa themed one from Target’s Wondershop because I knew I had a loose Christmas tree farm theme that I wanted to try for.

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Since this is the return of our elf, I also wanted to pull out some helpful new things I got this year to aide in our elf-scapades… this Elf Excursion box from Etsy and Elves at Play set from Target.

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The Elf Excursion box (sold out right now unfortunately) is cool because it not only tells you what to do each day, but it provides all the props you need (minus elf) AND gives a reference picture of what it should look like. I am not following the exact schedule the box gives (like I didn’t start with Day 1) but I like to rifle through and pick the ones that are my favorite to recreate. The Elves at Play also has cool ideas AND a bunch of elf furniture and props, like chairs and a candy cane hook.

Okay! So once I had all my “pieces” that I mentally knew I wanted to use for the breakfast decor, all I had to do was lay everything out.

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Ooh, I was super excited to lay out these monogrammed ornaments for our kids at each of their table places. I bought these in OCTOBER – look I have the receipt to prove it 😂

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And Anthropologie came out with these holiday-colored matte latte bowls! I thought they were perfect for our breakfast because the colors matched.

As well as these cute Christmas-themed plates (milk & carrots platter, the Christmas tree farm plates and Christmas tree platter are both sold out but were purchased from West Elm and Pottery Barn respectively). I bought these new this year but I am planning on using them all throughout the holiday season every year (as of writing this post, I’ve already used them twice more!).

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And this is what I had as a “final result” (pre-food) after setting everything up!

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This has nothing to do with the actual North Pole breakfast but look at this cute doggy advent calendar we picked up from Costco for Kylo + Daisy! 😂Everyone in the Sophisu House gets a chance to get festive.

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the morning of

Speaking of festive pooches, look at these two crazies, up before everyone else is.

Because I never tell my kids if/when Finley and the North Pole breakfast is happening, I always like to wake up early and just wait around in the kitchen and see how long it takes for the kids to discover what is happening. I usually start cooking the food and see who will wake up first. This year, D was the first one to walk into the kitchen (it’s usually E).

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Next up was little A….

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And last, my big girl E! She used to be such an early riser and the first one awake every year but I think as she gets older and closer to the teen years, she’s starting to sleep more and wake up later. Oh boy 😂

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Everyone opening up their advent calendars … so much excitement in the air. This mama loves it 🙂

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And then it was time to GRUB! This year, I made a breakfast casserole for the first year and it was a HIT! I’m going to be make it again on Christmas morning – the recipe was SO easy and everyone loved it (except D who doesn’t like eggs). We also had fresh fruit, bagels, donuts, bacon, potatoes, hot chocolate … yea, we all had all the things.

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Praying for our breakfast and the start of advent season 🤍

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And then GRUBBING!!! Yummmm, we had festive Christmas music playing in the back … it was such a sweet time together. The dogs were kept in their crates because Daisy is still too young/wild but I hope next year they can join us in the kitchen while we eat.

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Tired parents 🙂 Actually, not sure why J is tired since I did literally everything but I think he’s just always tired 😂

the afternoon

Now, I wouldn’t normally smoosh both our Christmas tree chopping AND North Pole breakfast into one day (because it’s a lot of work and I’d rather split them up) but because we were out of town for most of Thanksgiving week and I really wanted BOTH of these things done before December, we had to combine them into the same day. After breakfast, we got everything cleaned up and then loaded up the car so that we could drive to our favorite Christmas tree farm about an hour and half away. We didn’t bring Kylo this time but had to bring Daisy because she couldn’t be left alone for the amount of time we’d be gone (close to 4-5 hours).

I wore my new Bauble Bar Santa earrings for the occasion 🤪

We’ve been going to Garlock Tree Farm up in Sebastopol for over ten years now. They’re dog friendly (on a leash), have a live Santa (minus last year when it was a sad cardboard cutout), kitschy (in the best way) ornaments, petting zoo, tractor rides, just ALL THE THINGS. They used to do horse drawn carriage rides and a jumpy house but I think with COVID they had to reduce some of the attractions. That’s okay, it’s still our favorite place to go every year for our tree. We usually stop by a local market nearby the farm and pick up lunch things and picnic at the farm.

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It was a little harder to enjoy our time there this year because we had to keep Daisy off the ground since her immune system isn’t strong enough to combat whatever she might pick up from other people’s shoes and dogs. She’s already getting too heavy to hold for long periods of time and she kept trying to jump out of the wagon/dogseat we had for her so … yes. I was sweating 😂

Looking for the perfect tree…

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Found it! D REALLY wanted to chop down the tree all by himself this year (he usually helps J do it) so he tried … for a long time…

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SANTA!! We weren’t sure if Santa would be back this year but were so excited to see that he WAS. They were smart and put a giant hay bale in front of Santa so there was some automatic distance and then instead of sitting on his lap for pictures, you just sat on the hay bale. I actually really liked it! And listening to the kiddos tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas was ALSO very helpful 😉

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We paid for our tree, got some new ornaments, then called it a day and headed back home. Another year in the books!

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later that night

We had the kids eat dinner, shower, and put on their new jammies before we got to work decorating our tree! J & I did the lights and assisted with a few high-up ornaments but other than that, for the most part the kids did the entire tree. It’s a little wonky and crazy looking but I love it. J & I were talking the other day .. we only have 8 more Christmases before E is 18 .. 10 more with D. Half their time at home in our house is gone… of course, once they’re in college they’ll *hopefully* still want to come home for the holidays but there’s really no guarantee once they’re adults and grown. I’m trying to soak up all the little moments of magic with them while I can (*excuse me while I now go cry in a closet somewhere*).

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Our kids rotate lighting the star at the top of the tree and it was D’s turn this year…

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Because there are three kiddos, ours obviously only get a turn every 3 years to light the star. Look how little D was the last time it was his turn 🥺

Finished Christmas tree, all ready for presents! (Psssst: this year, we’re not going to put ANY presents under the tree until Christmas Eve after they’re in bed hahahahaa. We usually wrap gifts and place under the tree as we go but we thought it’d be funny to see their reaction if there’s no gifts until Christmas. Nobody has said anything so far other than E, who is so confused and keeps asking me where the presents are.)

And then, per tradition, with our newly decorated 2021 tree lit up in the room, we all snuggled up for a family movie night. We watched the latest Grinch movie and ate popcorn all together .. at one point, everyone ended up snuggled on top of me.

This is one of my favorite traditions every year so sorry this post was so long and late in coming. There was a lot to share! Hope it was worth the wait for you though 🙂