The 5 Parts of Christmas 2019 | A Holiday Recap

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always enjoyed Christmas. It’s always felt like a magical time of year! Whenever December 1st rolls around, I’m always ready to dive headfirst into everything: celebrations with my loved ones, anything Christmas-themed (from décor to drinks, from snacks to sounds), buying and wrapping and giving gifts, and all the traditions that I’ve grown up with (noche buena, Secret Santa, Christmas movies). I had an amazing time celebrating the holidays in so many ways this year, and I felt like it would be fun to do a two-part recap! 

My second recap is going to be more about my personal experiences. It was a fun (and busy) December for me with all the holiday indulgence that went on! I spent every day leading up to Christmas celebrating in ways big and small, including dressing festively (I wore a lot of red and green clothing and even had a Christmas manicure) and all the things I’m about to share. 

For Christmas 2019, my memories include...

Five Yummy Treats

Quick shoutout to a few old standbys: Walt Disney World hot chocolate, chestnut praline lattes and toasted white chocolate mochas from Starbucks!

• Seasonal cereals – Rachel (my sister) picked up two special edition cereals for us to try this year: Lucky Charms Cinnamon Vanilla Stuff and Cap’n Crunch’s Christmas Crunch. I am a big fan of both cereals already and these special editions were both delicious! I think I preferred the Lucky Charms overall, but they were both worth buying (and I’d totally get them again). 
• Peppermint pretzel snaps from Milk Bar – During Festive Fun Day, the girls and I stopped over at Milk to pick up their holiday offering. It was delicious! I’m a big peppermint fan and having the salty pretzel bits to balance it out was a win. (This photo was taken by Rachel.)
• Stax unicorn cake (made with peppermint Oreo bark flavor) – We closed out Festive Fun Day with dessert! I love the ice cream cakes from Stax, and this one was so good. It combines vanilla and peppermint Oreo bark for the actual cake bit and I couldn’t stop taking bites of it! 
• Stuffed snowman ice cream cone – Rachel and I have a few annual New York holiday traditions and visiting Stuffed is one of them. We picked the Cookie Monster flavor for our base, and our snowman was created with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. 
• United Chocolate Works hot chocolate – This is another sister tradition! We go out of our way to grab our favorite hot chocolate (more than once) at the holiday markets. It’s consistently delicious, as it’s not overwhelmingly sweet. 

Four Festive Outings

• New York Christmas decorations walk – Annual tradition alert! My sister and I always go on a walk from The Plaza to Bryant Park, hopping between 5th and 6th Avenues, just to see all the décor. We always stop by the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and we always check out all the window displays too! It’s often really crowded (as the holiday season is wont to be in NYC), but it’s fun. This year was extra special because our family friend Clarissa was with us!
• Festive Fun Day – I already did an entire recap of this day, but basically, Rachel and Kristin and I are fully cementing this annual tradition where we spend the entire day hanging out and exploring some of the festive offerings in NYC. It was a lovely way to spend a Saturday, and I can’t wait to do it again!
• LuminoCity Festival – While I wouldn’t necessarily say that this was a fully holiday-centered outing, I will say that it was something fun to experience at least once! Visitors get to walk around exploring gigantic light displays (with different themed sections) and there are some photo ops along the way. Because it’s an outdoor event, your visit will be affected by the weather, just like we ended up not being able to take full advantage of things because of the mud.
• Dyker Heights Christmas Lights – I’ve heard that it’s a must for the holiday season to visit the Dyker Heights neighborhood and see how all these houses are decorated, and I finally got to go down there this year! It was fun to walk around with my sisters and to see how extensively decorated all these homes were.

Three Christmas Dinners

There’s truly nothing better than celebrating the holidays with people I adore! I’ve got to do a quick shout-out about noche buena and Christmas dinner, which were quiet, at-home affairs but still so very special since I got to spend it with Macky and my sisters.

• Edo Sushi with DJ & Rachel 
• Momofuku Noodle Bar with Kristin & Rachel 
• Petit Poulet with Rachel 

Two Christmas Concerts

• A Pentatonix Christmas – I finally got to see Pentatonix (a group I really admire) perform live! We went to see them on December 1st (to kick the month off right), and it was such a treat to witness their skills as an a capella group live and singing holiday tunes. 
• Christmas in the City with Lea Michele – I also finally got the chance to see Lea Michele sing live and was completely blown away. She’s so talented and personable, and I loved being at this intimate concert she held to celebrate her Christmas album release. (I totally cried too!)

And One Happy Holiday Party!

Happy Holidays! is what I lovingly called our theme for this year’s Christmas party with my New York family. It’s a play on the fact that each person in attendance had to dress up as the holiday of their choice, a theme that I’m pretty sure my sister Rachel came up with. It was fun to surprise each other with our outfits and to get together for food, drinks and games at our friends Pat and Ian’s apartment!