Hannah Morrison

Family Advent Calendar

As Knox is getting older [and a Christmas time baby!], it’s so fun to make the entire Christmas season exciting with new adventures and surprises. This year, I am using the Advent Prep Club to custom tailor our 25 days of surprises from their resource guide of over 150 activities. They are so fun and provide you every link, tool, and printable resource you could possibly need, including a budget spreadsheet to help you navigate having fun WISELY this Christmas season. You sign up and have full access all season long! It’s GENIUS. I have known the owners of this fun idea for years, and have personally watched them do this Advent calendar for about 6 years- long before they ever turned it into a resource for others to use! They make Christmas so magical for their girls, and I can’t wait to do this for our boys. Follow this link to see more.

I don’t want to share our WHOLE calendar of events, because I really want to encourage you to 1. Make your own and 2. Support this small family-owned business! But here’s 10 of my favorite ideas we will be doing at a wide range of price points:

  1. Bed time story with somebody special: My hope would be to surprise the boys with their grandparents for a special reading of a Christmas book!
  2. Christmas Charcuterie Board + a Movie: Knox LOVES “making” in the kitchen, so anything that can have him be a chef is a win for him!
  3. Donuts in Jammies with Dad: Self explanatory 😉
  4. Living Room Slumber Party with Mom and Dad: We are talking DECKED OUT, twinkle lights, sleeping bags, and snowflakes hanging from the ceiling!
  5. North Park Santa: He IS the real Santa Claus
  6. Visit a Christmas Tree Farm
  7. Pick This Year’s SPECIAL Ornament: I want our boys to pick out a special ornament every year for their tree!
  8. Random Rudolph Gift Exchange with BFFs: Every year, my best friends and I draw names for our babies and they buy one another gifts and we all hang out. It’s so fun and one of my favorite nights of the season.
  9. Bake and Decorate Birthday Cupcakes for Jesus: Again, Knoxy LOVES to “make.” But, I really can start teaching him about the story of Christmas this year on a deeper level, and I can’t wait to dive into that with him.
  10. The Polar Express for Knoxy’s Birthday: There’s a few Polar Express experiences in the area, but we are buying tickets for this one in Palestine, TX. Word on the street is it’s the most magical! Majority of our Advent experiences are free or very minimal cost. This one is our splurge for Knox’s birthday!

Colorful Advent calendars to put your surprises in:

Happy Advent Prepping! I hope you check out this site and sign-up for their resources to making Christmas as magical as possible for your family.

 

Our Family Christmas Photos

They’re here, they’re here! I wasn’t sure when I wanted to share these, but as you all are navigating your own Christmas sessions, I wanted to go ahead and share our family shoot this year as aid for poses/outfits/inspo! Of all the years of Christmas photos we have done with Hannah H. from Cottonwood Road Photography… these are without a doubt our favorite to date. I shared a bit more about our outfits on this post and want to give another shoutout to Sydney Grace Beauty who made me feel like an absolute rockstar. I don’t do makeup at all, and it was so fun to get my face done for these, because Lord knows I could never do my eye shadow like this… hehe.

2020 has without a doubt been such a wild year for everybody. And it’s arguably been the hardest year by circumstance we’ve ever faced in our family. And yet… the most full, life-giving, joyful one. I mean it. I am not just saying that because it’s the Christian thing to say. I mean it with every ounce of my being. We have experienced heartache and slander and hurt we never thought we’d have to journey through. We’ve experienced a pandemic, being pregnant and having to go to appointments alone. A hospitalization at 22 weeks, a perfect newborn baby in the NICU… we’ve experienced lost dreams and squashed expectations.

But there is always hope.

Today, as I share these photos, I truly hope you see a family who has been through hell this year. And yet, we smile. We are genuinely smiling in these. We are genuinely the happiest we’ve ever been, and it’s all on the other side of a treacherous season I would wish for nobody. The key to our smiles… HOPE. We know there is a hope far beyond this Earth for us. We’ve held to the promises of God through every high and low- not only the ones we feel God has promised us personally for our future. BUT, the promise that He is GOOD, FOR US, and NEVER LEAVES US. The promise that He fights for us. The promise that He makes all things work together for our good. The God who promised a Savior to His people centuries before they ever saw it come to fruition, He is the God who always comes through with His word at the perfect time.

So, we enter into the Christmas season *err… maybe a hair earlier than usual this year* with the greatest reminder of hope the world has ever known. Jesus was the fulfillment of all the promises God told His people would come at the exact right time. He is for you. He is the epitome of good. He is the best gift ever. He IS hope. That even when we can’t see it, He is working. He is fixing. He is healing. He is your defender.

This family you see in these photos, we walk with a new understanding by the grace of God what it means to cling to hope. In a way that truly can only be grasped by a season of NEEDING it, hope is alive in this family. And it can be inside of yours, too. I hope our smiles, at the very least, can encourage you today if you find yourself aching for hope.

If you’re in the north Texas area and have’t heard the news, my family is launching Cadence Church in the fall of 2021. This hope we have that got us through this year is available to everybody, and we want the city of Frisco to know it. It’s a year long process to plant and we are currently building our launch team. We’d love to meet with you, answer any questions, and ultimately pray that if you feel called to it, you’d join us!

xoxo,

The Morrisons

I seriously had to reel it in and not share 60+ photos… You can see more on my Pinterest! But the key to a great family shoot: happy kids and just “playing” with them while the photographer snaps away. Get to their level, laugh, talk, make jokes, tell them secrets in their ear. We seriously had so much fun with this shoot, and you can see it!

Colorful Christmas Home Decor

TODAY IS THE DAY. Yep… We are going for it. I am putting up my tree and finding things to be joyful about as we all anxiously navigate a tension so thick I legit feel like you can feel it in the air. On our phones, on our tvs, on our computers… when we are in the lines at the grocery store.

So… Christmas time in the Morrison household. We transitioned from white and gold christmas decor to ALL.THE.COLOR. a couple of years ago, and I am still as in love with it as ever. My favorite spots to find Christmas decor every year to add to my collection are without a doubt Anthropologie and Opalhouse at Target. These two look so similar in style and are entirely different price points. This makes it easy to find the few expensive pieces at Anthro you don’t want to shortchange and will last for years, while the other is cheaper but just as cute IMO!

Our Christmas Photo Outfits

Hey, girl, heyyyy! Well, with November here and in full swing, it’s likely you are about to have your family Christmas photos *eeeep!* Our Christmas photos are for sure one of my favorite things we do every year that gets me in full on holiday mode. Last year we did a formal look and the year before that was a very casual plaid and flannel type of year (here). The year before that I was like… DUE pregnant hehe, and we did our photos at The Nest Wedding Venue, here.  And just for kicks you can see our really old shoots from our second and third Christmases together as wittle babies here and here. Our first Christmas is somewhere in my archives on my computer?… but who the heck knows. I will have to try to find those for kicks.

This year I went for nice, but not quite formal. Paul said it’s his favorite overall look yet in our 6 years of shoots. My girl Sydney Grace Beauty did my make-up and I am so pumped about it. I hardly wear make-up in my day to day, so I wanted something soft and sweet but still glammed up. Every step of the way she would stop and ask if it was going the right direction for me and made sure it wasn’t “too much.” Seriously, she is SO TALENTED. She is in the McKinney area, and I can’t suggest her enough. Ask her to sing for you, too. 😉

For my dress, I went with a long dusty rose satin gown *only $51!* and put all my boys in blacks and creams. I guess the bonus of being outnumbered by boys in this household is I can be in any color I want for photos to pop. 😉 I am obsessed with this dress and have it paired with my Marc Fisher booties I bought during the Nordstrom Anni Sale, but could go great with heels and sneakers just as well.

My Bootie: 

Because I figure you might be frantically running around trying to nail down your holiday looks before pictures, I wanted to go ahead and share links to our full outfits this year so that I could help you nail down your family photo looks! I will share our full shoot with @cottonwoodroadphotography soon, but until then, here’s links below to grab the look ahead of time! See our BTS video here. 

Knox’s outfit is from Zara and can’t be linked! Here and Here

Our Holiday Meal Plan

Hey, hey gals! Can you believe it’s almost Christmas Eve?! I have been a day off in my head and definitely woke up thinking today was the 22nd. Yikes, I have a lot to do today. I will be headed out to grab all of our holiday meals and thought I would share with you! If you are part of my emails and enjoy The Cake for Dinner… I promise it’s returning. I took a break during the holiday season because we have zero consistency and eat out so much more than usual. I will share more about out holiday season soon, but I have just been trying to be completely present! Thanks for understanding. I can’t wait to kick off the new year with healthy meals for your family, though. It’s going to be a blast to start the new year together in good spirits and health.

Christmas Eve: 

I grew up eating a special lasagna meal served on my mom’s fancy china on Christmas Eve. It was tradition to go to the candle light service at church followed by our meal together at the table by candle light with my mom’s red table cloth and lace linens. It always felt so special. Then, all my siblings and I would get into our Christmas jammies and sleep in our sleeping bags on the floor of one of our rooms. My parents would come in and film us on the big Camcorder, asking us what we thought Santa was bringing us as we would sleepily recite all of our hopes and dreams for Christmas morning. I can still remember those nights with my siblings on the floor, giggling and falling asleep to the sounds of the hum of our space heaters. I have carried this meal on in my own family, served on my great grandma’s special china that I inherited.

Momma’s Lasagna Recipe

Christmas Morning:

We ate my mom’s easy breakfast casserole every single Christmas morning after opening gifts. By breakfast, my grandparents had made it over to the house and we would all eat together. We are from San Antonio, so topping this dish with salsa is a must. Then, when Paul and I got married, we were so broke that our first Christmas at our apartment had no presents. We only were able to buy some special food to make. So, I decided to make the breakfast casserole and added to our traditions with this amazing French Toast Casserole. It’s seriously become famous among my friends, and they now make it for their own Christmas morning breakfasts and brunch parties. There are always leftovers, and that is our lunch as well as we prepare for dinner.

Momma’s Breakfast Casserole

French Toast Casserole 

Christmas Dinner: 

Our first Christmas I made rosemary lamb and risotto. It was fantastic. However, some of our family doesn’t do lamb, so we save that dish for other special occasions now. Instead, we do a traditional ham, corn casserole, and sweet potato casserole. Of course served with mulled wine (easy recipe found here).

I have made a slew of different Sweet Potato Casseroles over the years, trying different recipes out. And, y’all. I found the best one. I made it for Thanksgiving and it was such a hit. I found it on Holly Furtick’s Instagram and decided to give it a shot… and wow. I MEAN. This is officially my family’s sweet potato casserole dish.

Casserole:

3 Cups Mashed Sweet Potato (I used 6 massive sweet potatoes… I am not sure if it was 3 cups, but it was the perfect amount IMO)

1/2 c. brown sugar, packed

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 c. milk (we use Almond to make DF)

1/2 c. melted butter (we use Earth Balance to make DF)

Topping:

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. flour (we use Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose 1-1 Gluten Free)

1/3 c. melted butter

1 c. chopped pecans

Instructions:

  1. Heat oven to 350, prepare a 9×13 baking dish for casserole
  2. In a large bowl, combine mashed sweet potatoes with brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk, and 1/2 c. of melted butter. Blend and spoon the mixture into a greased baking dish.
  3. In separate bowl, combine the topping mixture together, blending all ingredients well. Sprinkle the mixture over the casserole.
  4. Bake for 40 minutes until the filling is hot and topping is golden brown.

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