An OC Christmas

I've said it before and I will say it again. I love the Holidays. This year, though. It seems to lack a little bit of luster. Nevertheless, I always love being around my families and eating and baking my way through the weekend.

Mike and I had a little Christmas celebration of our own with Tay in our apartment in San Diego and then headed up on Friday to our parent's homes. Our families (luckily) only live 20 minutes apart from each other so it makes it easier to see everyone on Christmas.

Christmas eve day I spent with Mike's family. We went out to brunch and received some very exciting news (can't share yet but I am just SO excited!!) and then relaxed watching Christmas movies in the afternoon. Afterwards, I headed home to have an amazing prime rib dinner with my family and some of my dad's closest friends. I made some fresh baked pesto garlic dinner rolls. I left this recipe at home (I am in Mexico right now so I will have to get you this recipe when I get home next week...they were bomb though).

Christmas day was a hectic morning (as always with a family of six) but it is always so nice to wake up and do gifts and bake and hang out with the family in the morning. Afterwards I headed back over to Mike's for a bit and then he came over to my grandmother's for a bit as well. Busy, right??

It is all worth it to see everyone that I love. We had an incredible dinner at my grandmothers (best gyoza ever made and now Mike can attest to that!) and then I came home and passed the eff out.

Merry Christmas! I hope yours was full of love, laugher, family and friends.

You can see that Taylor is in pretty high demand among my family members. Its easy to be popular when you are as cute as her!

As far as dessert goes, I made a chocolate ganache cake that was requested by my Aunt Patty and adorned it with some white chocolate Christmas trees. I also made a fresh lemon meringue tart from the lemons that came straight off of Grandma's tree. YUM.

Recipe for the Lemon Meringue Tart

It calls for a 9'' tart pan and I only had an 11'' so I probably should have made more of the lemon curd but I didn't. I recommend using the 9'' or doubling the curd.