Thanks for reading our first edition. We were mighty proud. And a few tears were shed writing it. This edition is about our favorite tastes for the holidays. Family heirloom recipes, tasty traditions and new ideas.

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Jen- One of my favorite holiday scents is orange. Oranges studded with cloves with velvet ribbons usually adorn the table. Making them…not as much fun! One year I gave clove studded oranges and jars of fudge sauce. It’s so darn good. I have been known to just eat a few spoonfuls as a little pick me up! Making english toffee was another yearly tradition. Not for the faint of heart but the end result is so delicious. Large gingerbread cookies to hang on the tree were traditional in my grannys home. She always cut hers by hand but me….well I started a healthy obsession with large copper cookie cutters. I probably have every holiday shape there is. And nothing under 5 inches. With the big black labs I had as an adult…..there was no way to keep real cookies on my tree but we still make the cookies every year.

Best Fudge Sauce.

• 1/2 cup butter

• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

• 1 tbsp corn syrup

• 1 cup evaporated milk

• 2 cups confectioners sugar

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Place everything but vanilla extract in a heavy saucepan over love heat. Stir frequently as it melts and then as it becomes silky, whisk all together to ensure a smooth mixture. Bring to low boil, reduce heat and cook for 5 minutes. Do not let get to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract. Pour into jars or serve over a really tasty ice cream!

Every year I try to pick some cookies or treats that I haven’t made yet. The possibilities are endless. New additions to the list are Cream Cheese Mints and Milk Chocolate Turtles. I’m such a sucker for christmas baking! Never enough time or quite frankly, enough people to eat them! The holidays give me an excuse to overindulge in recipe testing and half the joy is in the tools. Baking pans, cookie cutters, sparkling sugar, nonpariels, I’m a glutton.

Cream Cheese Mints.
• 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese
• ¼ c. soft butter
• 2 boxes powdered sugar (plus 1 box on hand for rolling)
• Food coloring
• Various extract flavors of your choice

Combine cream cheese and butter in heavy pan. Stir over low heat until cream cheese is soft, butter is melted and the mixture is easy to blend. Add powdered sugar. Divide dough into small bowls, as many flavors as you would like. Start sparingly with the flavors, you can always add more. Same with the color. Better to start light and make it more vibrant as you go. Mix each color with a separate spoon….don’t mix colors or flavors.

Line a cookie sheet with wax paper or parchment. Work the dough, one bowl at the time, by first rolling into small balls about one inch. If it’s too sticky, mix in a little more powdered sugar. You can use the bottom of a patterned glass or the tines of a fork to press the mints flat. Let them dry on the cookie sheet for a couple of days. Turning them over to dry halfway is a good idea.

Rachel- Oh the holidays….as much as I love the holidays, they also stress the hell out of me! I mentioned in our first post that I don’t bake for Christmas, reason being is my Mother bakes anywhere from 20 to I think her high was 48 dozen cookies each year. Therefore there really is no reason to add….plus she’s an excellent baker!

I’m going to share two recipes, one savory and one sweet.

Savory - Gramma’s Sausage Stuffing

The other reason I tend not to bake is, I like to improvise with my cooking,
and we all know that you cannot improvise in baking. My Gramma’s sausage stuffing
is a staple at our Thanksgiving dinner table. Typically my family, who is known for
having SO much food at our gatherings, typically averages about 5-10 lbs of stuffing
made for the holiday. This certainly could be made at Christmas too! The recipe below
is simply for one pound, and you can multiply from there.

One (1) pound ground pork sausage ( I have used either the Jimmy Dean Sage Sausage
or Mckenzie Pork Sausage
~1/4-1/2 cup of Mirepoix (fancy term for celery, carrot and onion all chopped up, for this
I would say one carrot, one celery, one small onion)
1/2 sleeve of saltine crackers, crushed
Bell Seasoning to “smell” (literally I add the spice until it smells like my Gramma’s stuffing,
approx. 2tbs, I don’t think you can ever use too much Bell Seasoning)

Bake at 350F until pork sausage reaches appropriate temp, ~170F. I would say approximately
1/2hr ( my 4lbs took about 1.5 hrs)


Sweet - Walnut Bourbon Balls
[Yields 3.5 dozen]

5 dozen(2.5 cups) crushed vanilla wafers
2Tbs cocoa
1 cup (sifted) powdered sugar
1 cup finely chopped walnuts or coconut or your nut of preference
3 Tbs corn syrup
1/4 cup of bourbon

Mix first 4 ingredients well.
Add corn syrup and Bourbon
Shape in 1” balls
Roll in powdered sugar
Store in covered container and enjoy!

Thanks for reading with us. We hope your holiday season is filled with joy and not so much stress. Support local and shop small. Eat lots of christmas cookies and drink lots of eggnog. Take some time and make some handmade gifts. Indulge and do things that make you smile. Take the dogs for a walk, breathe deeply and don’t let the kids make you crazy!! That’s our advice Love, Rachel + Jen.

Firstly, thank you for spending time with us. And if you are an L+L customer, thank you so much for supporting our small business. This is a venture of best friends having the best time shopping and finding items that we like and would use. Not necessarily essential, but then we believe in treating yourself and others with some joy. 

The holidays are always exciting. And certainly some years they have more meaning than others. Here's our take on 2020.

Jen - I find holidays have changed in meaning as I grow older. And this year, I feel like I need to make entirely new traditions to counteract the craziness. When I was a young adult, I was adamant about creating new traditions that had my signature for my family. My parents and grandparents were so tradition heavy, and I loved them, but I was desperate to make individual ones. As I am "older" and my kids are older, I realize how much those "older" traditions mean to me, so now I combine them. And kids? Tough noogies, you will put those Xmas PJs on Christmas eve, and you know you like it…cause it makes momma happy.

Top 3 traditions. 

1- Christmas Cookies. I have what feels like thousands of recipes between cookbooks, vintage magazines, family recipes, and Pinterest. And I can never make them all, but it's such a special time to browse them all, pick this year's winners and make them.

2- Holiday PJs on Christmas Eve for the kids. #photoop

3- Mini trees popping up magically in each child's room. I've done different advent ideas over the years. Little felt stockings numbered, an advent tree box, numbered boxes….now I have tabletop trees with mini decorations themed to each child, and I add to them. Hannah's is turquoise with very "lilly" themed decorations. Jack's is evergreen with very classic primary colors. I hope they get a quarter of the joy I do.

Gifts.

Covid made me pick up handcrafts again. For some reason, the validation to spend the time was stronger, and when I realized how it made me feel…..perfect! I felt peaceful, accomplished, and proud that I could make something to give to my close friends. So knitting, watercolors, and jewelry, that's what they are getting. And some L+L merchandise too, cause hello! Rachel has always been such a thoughtful giver and thus encouraged me to be more spontaneous with giving. Whenever she hears sorrow or hears darkness in my voice, she will send a card. (A card in the mailbox is really special!) Or a new teacup and a new tea. Or flowers….something that never fails to lift my spirits, remind me someone is there and important reminder, pay it forward.

Some of my L+L gifts this year.

1. Silver teapot with Great White silver tips white tea and The New Grey Darjeeling earl grey from Teapigs.

2. Dot & Army's kitchen scrubbies with the Unpaper towels and seasonal Mrs. Meyers dish soap. My favorite this year? Snowdrop..mandarin, iced petunia, and praline. Gasp!

3. Tortoiseshell Lucite Earrings. Classic, blonde, and garden hoops.

Recipes. 

Next blog post, we will include recipes and yummy ideas. My contributions this year, My fudge sauce..perfect for giving, and this fantastic Bourbon Caramel bundt cake I found a few years ago.

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Rachel- Christmas for me has always been my absolute favorite holiday. As a child, and even into my teens, I could never sleep on Christmas Eve and would be begging my parents to wake at the crack of dawn to begin opening presents. Growing up, we would start our holiday season with my Great Aunt Ellie's holiday party around the second weekend in December. The event was always such fun-filled with great food, laughter, and gift-giving. I loved this party ( and my Aunt Ellie, such a classy lady) because it started the season early. On Christmas Eve, we would go to Christmas Eve service and then go to my grandparent's house on my Dad's side for dinner, gifts, and family gatherings, always getting home late into the evening. Christmas morning was spent at our house opening gifts and calling my best friends, comparing what we got for Christmas. Or in the year of Cabbage Patch kids, me running over our neighbors, The Breens, to show Mrs. Breen my new doll. She had three boys, so I think she enjoyed that. :)

In the afternoon, we would go to my grandparents on my mother's side. My Gramma Hammond always made Christmas SO special for all of us. Spending Christmas Day with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents was still a fantastic event. We are all very close, and I consider my cousins' siblings rather than cousins. It was crucial to my gramma that each grandchild have the same dollar amount spent on each down to the penny. A tradition that I, of course, have continued today with my kids. She would also always make us a gift. It was a stuffed animal horse with reigns and bridle; another year, it was fluffy giant teddy bears, always something we could cuddle. Now, there are eight grandchildren, that's a lot of sewing, and in the case of the fluffy bears, there was a lot of fur in my grandparent's house that year. For us, and that's eight of us. I still have the items she made for me and have shared them with my children.

Now that I have a family of my own, I love spending Christmas Eve with my husband's family and then Christmas morning at our home. My boys are now 10 and 13, so some of Christmas's "magic" has changed. When they were younger, I loved getting them to bed and then setting up the tree just right, so it was a magical experience for them, just as I had learned from my parents and grandparents.

Top 3 traditions:

1. Putting our tree up after thanksgiving - this is a tradition I started with my kids (and especially after getting our artificial tree, (a result of too many leaky trees)

2. My mother's Christmas cookies. Yes, I realize I don't bake them, but why would I when my mother bakes up to 40 dozen cookies each year! LOL

3. Spending Christmas Day with my extended family. This year, COVID affects this tradition, but I'm sure we will all have a Zoom meeting and still start laughing till we cry.

My Favorite Gifts.

1. The handmade gifts always meant the most-items made by my grandmothers, aunts, mom. Items that I still have today because of the love that went into them to make.

2. Don't laugh, but the Vuarnet sunglasses that my grandmother gave me my junior year in high school. And I still have them today. They were so cool, navy blue cat-eye sunglasses that I wore for years as a lifeguard in Lake George. And given that all things come back in style, they are back in vogue now.

3. My brother inherited all the creative genes in our family; he made me an excellent mobile with leaves and acorns. He also made me a king-size cedar log bed as a wedding present!

(these gifts are in no particular order of favorites, I could go on because I have been so blessed with fantastic family and gifts throughout the years)

Some of my L+L gifts this year.

1. Anything lounge related! The Phil Love lounge pants, fluffy slippers, and our sweatshirt are a must during this crazy time we are all going through.

2. Calming spray! I use this a lot at home and work.

3. The Dot and Army scrubbies are amazing! I use them for dishes and another as a vegetable scrubber. They hold up so well and are my favorite colors to boot!

Thanks for reading with us…Favorite recipes to follow next week.