Christmas - Belle Antiquarian

Keep the Holiday Magic Alive: Traditions for Every Age

When my kids were small, it seemed like the chaos of December would never end. There were classroom parties, letters to Santa, reindeer food, and late-night baking – all to keep the holiday magic alive for them. The truth is that the years slip by, and suddenly little ones who once tore into wrapping paper have grown, live in their own homes, and are building their own lives.

I’ve never been the type of mom that thought my job was done when the kids were grown. It turns out that I really like the people I raised, and I love spending time with them. So now, I look for new ways to keep the holiday magic alive by creating fresh traditions we can share as adults.

A group of children sitting with an adult during a Christmas gathering, wearing pajamas and costumes, capturing a warm vintage holiday memory.

Can you remember what you did the December you were ten years old? I can’t, and I’m willing to bet that you can’t either. We can’t rely on the magic of Christmas from childhood to provide a lifetime of memories. We need to continually fill the memory banks of our family, so that they’ll have memories to draw from later.

Relationships are built on shared experiences, and if we don’t have any shared experiences, relationships drift apart.

This article contains affiliate links. As an affiliate, I may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases—at no additional cost to you.

Now that my husband and I have been empty nesters for three years, we’ve learned there were things that no one prepared us for. Something we didn’t anticipate was how strange it would be the first time one of our kids wasn’t home on Christmas morning.

That day there was a missing piece of our family puzzle, and we didn’t feel complete for the rest of the day. After that Christmas, we knew that we needed to start planning holidays differently to intentionally create traditions filled with joy for our adult children. We would keep the holiday magic alive to carry us through until the next time we’d all be together again.

If I had to give one recommendation for parents of grown children, it would be that you must be flexible. We have raised these kids to be successful, independent people making their own way through the world. In doing so, they will create their own lives separate from ours. When they start families of their own, they’ll build new traditions, and that’s something to celebrate.

A young family standing beside a decorated Christmas tree, holding a toddler and smiling together during a holiday moment. — The years go by faster than we expect. I’m grateful for every season we’ve shared.

What does it look like to be flexible?

The main way you can be flexible is with the dates that you gather to celebrate the holidays. The holidays can be just as magical, if not more so, even when they’re celebrated on another day. When you’re flexible, your grown kids don’t have to rush off, and they’ll actually want to come.

Another way to be adaptable is letting go of the traditions from their childhood. Gathering around the Christmas tree to open gifts left by Santa was an experience that you got to enjoy when your kids were small. Once grown, that is something for them to experience with their significant other and their own children. This gives us an exciting opportunity to create new traditions! Instead of insisting on your kids being there Christmas morning, why not dedicate one day each year to baking, an ornament or PJ swap, or even Christmas themed games?

We can keep the holiday magic alive by focusing on joyful connections, rather than keeping exact dates and reenacting Christmas scenes from their childhood. Happy shared experiences create happy relationships.

Tips: Christmas fun can happen anytime during the holidays. Draw names and swap holiday pajamas early so they can be worn all season.

Young Adults Starting Your Own Traditions

One thing that I’ve learned from my grown kids is that they still want to have fun. This is especially true for college aged kids and young adults in their 20s. They still want to keep the holiday magic alive throughout the season.

If you fall into the young adult category and find yourself missing a bit of the holiday magic, start small. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

A dessert potluck between lunch and dinner or an ornament exchange at Thanksgiving can bring everyone together without overwhelming anyone.
If you don’t live close to family, don’t be afraid to ask friends if they want to get together for something festive. A hot chocolate bar, with everyone bringing a different topping, is a fun and inexpensive way to get together. If you’re looking for an inexpensive holiday activity with friends, driving around and looking at Christmas lights is a great idea.
If you’re worried about being alone on the holidays, try reaching out to hospitals or nursing homes to see if they need any volunteers.

Traditions are what connect us and give us a sense of belonging. They don’t have to be elaborate, Instagram-worthy spectacles. They’re simply moments that we repeat with intention with the people we care about.

If you’re young, don’t be intimidated by planning a holiday get together. You don’t have to create a perfect gathering to create a sense of belonging. People just want to be seen and included, and that can be done by simply inviting others in. You can be the one to keep the holiday magic alive for those around you.

Tips: For an extra element of fun, invite guests to bring a Christmas mug to swap at a hot chocolate bar. For a dessert potluck, provide to-go containers so guests can exchange leftovers to take home.

Holiday Game Night gift ideas featuring Christmas-themed games for families and friends — Belle Antiquarian. — Holiday Game Night: A festive, easy way to gather friends or family for laughter and connection.

Holiday hot chocolate bar setup with festive mugs, toppings, and cocoa tins — Belle Antiquarian. — Holiday Game Night: A festive, easy way to gather friends or family for laughter and connection.

Presence over Perfection

Whether you’re an empty nester or you’ve just flown the nest yourself, we all really want the same thing. We yearn to stay connected and belong to a circle of people who share joyful experiences and traditions during the holidays. Kids from two to ninety-two appreciate when others go out of their way to keep the holiday magic alive.

This year, think about ways that you can create new, meaningful ways to connect with the ones you love. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Gifts don’t have to be exchanged. What matters is that you’re present with the ones you love at a happy, enjoyable gathering.

In Closing

When I was a kid, we used to do this thing called, “Remember when.” When we were driving down the road or sitting around the table, one of us would say, “remember when,” and we would then proceed to tell the story about something that had happened. The stories we usually told involved all of us doing or experiencing something together. We could collectively remember and relive this experience through the re-telling of the story.

This holiday season I encourage you to create some experiences that will one day be “remember whens.” The holidays have always been less about what’s under the tree and more about who’s around it. Keep filling the memory banks. One day, those small, ordinary gatherings will be the treasures that tell your family’s story.

Children dressed in angel and nativity costumes during a Christmas pageant, standing together on stage in a warm vintage holiday scene. — I grew up in a season of simple Christmas programs and handmade costumes. These are the memories that stay with us.

Explore More From this Series

If you enjoyed this article on holiday traditions, we invite you to explore more from the series. Each article in this series celebrates the beauty of Southern living through the seasons. You can find the full collection on the homepage under Home for the Holidays: A Southern Season of Charm.

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November 15, 2025March 16, 2026

Abby Smolarsky4 Comments

Natural Fall Decor: Simple Ways to Bring the Outdoors In

Welcome to the first installment of my newest series, Home for the Holidays: A Southern Season of Charm. Today we begin by sharing ways to bring the outdoors inside to decorate your home with natural décor for fall.

The holiday season in the South is rich in tradition. It’s a graceful time of the year where we extend hospitality and celebrate the season by adding seasonal touches in gathering spaces. Each week of the Home for the Holidays series will be a celebration of meaningful traditions, nostalgic décor, and cozy inspiration for the heart of the home.

Whether you plan to host a large holiday gathering or your goal is to simply add traditional touches around your home, I hope you’ll come back each week for inspiration and a sense of community.

Autumn charm tucked into a secretary desk — goldenrod in a stoneware crock, bowls of acorns, beeswax candles, and heirloom blue-and-white china.

Why Choose Natural Fall Decor?

Albert Camus is credited with saying, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower,” and I can’t hear this quote without thinking of the mighty Southern magnolia.

Truly a Magnolia grandiflora, in the spring she entices us with massive, fragrant flowers in a milky white hue that contrast with her green leaves. Yet, the Magnolia doesn’t stop in spring! In the fall, we are presented with brilliant and strange cones that push out bright red seeds as they ripen. The vivid green leaves of spring have developed their velvety brown undersides, softening as the heat of summer eases into the first chilled autumn evenings of the Deep South.

During the spring and summer, we bring nature’s bounty indoors to eat. When autumn arrives, the growing season has come to an end. But that doesn’t mean we turn our backs on what nature has to offer. For generations Southerners have brought nature inside during autumn to decorate with and enjoy. By taking advantage of what nature has to offer us from the land, garden, and forests, we can decorate our homes in the traditional Southern fashion for little to no cost.

Southern autumn in hand — a magnolia seed pod bursting with brilliant red seeds.

The Three Categories of Natural Fall Decor

To make gathering from nature more approachable, I like to think of natural fall décor in three categories.

The Harvest: Abundance for the table and sideboard

The food we harvest to eat in the fall can also be used to decorate our homes. Apples of all shades from yellow to red to bright green mimic the colors of the leaves. A basket full of apples in the center of a breakfast table becomes edible artwork.

Pumpkins are sometimes overlooked as indoor décor. Most houses will be seen with one next to the front door, waiting for a face to be carved. But pumpkins can be used as indoor décor as well. A large pumpkin can be turned into a centerpiece, and small pumpkins can line a windowsill.

Layered textures of hydrangeas and grapevine wreath frame an heirloom pumpkin for an inviting fall accent.

In the fall we also harvest other growing plants like cotton, wheat, and many types of flowers. Bundles of cotton and wheat can be used in vases or wreaths. Dried hydrangeas and goldenrod are also traditional Southern fall decor.

The Gathered: Treasures from the forest floor

A walk through our natural surroundings will reveal all sorts of treasures if we observe the world around us. These items aren’t necessarily grown to harvest at the end of the season. They’re little gifts that we can find while looking on the forest floor or in the trees. Sometimes a stroll along the shore of an ocean or lake will reveal a prize to bring inside.

A hand-carved wooden dough bowl brimming with acorns adds warmth to a fall mantel styled with grapevine pumpkins.

In my own yard I collected magnolia and pine cones, acorns, and pecans. I filled all kinds of bowls and vessels to use them as natural fall décor. I also cut branches of magnolia to use in floral arrangements.

Other gathered finds are items like feathers, antler sheds, ethically sourced turtle shells, and oyster shells. All of these can be thoughtfully integrated into your fall décor.

The Handcrafted: Artisan-made with natural materials

The final category of natural fall décor is the handcrafted. Artisans use natural items to create things that we use on a daily basis. We can thoughtfully incorporate those items in our fall décor to highlight their natural materials and craftsmanship.

Pheasant feathers in ironstone, vintage books tied with velvet ribbon, and a grapevine pumpkin create timeless autumn layers.

Candles made of beeswax perfume the room and add a warm yellow tone to the space even when they’re not burning. Baskets made of local grass and willows are useful all year round, and in the fall they can be used to showcase things like a bunch of gourds.

Other handcrafted items to consider using in your natural fall décor are quilts, pottery, and sculptures made from wood or local rock.

How to Incorporate Natural Decor into Your Home

A common mistake people make when decorating their homes for the holidays is to go overboard with a theme. If every item in your home has a pumpkin motif on it, it will start to look more like a gift shop than a home with decorative touches. The same thing can happen if you go overboard with natural fall décor.

I recommend finding ways to integrate natural fall décor into your existing vignettes. Take one or two natural elements and treat them as “hero pieces” in combination with other groupings of existing décor. Consider things like textures, colors, and size when you’re styling or arranging your spaces.

Four Places to Add Natural Fall Decor

Mantel & Hearth: baskets with pinecones, magnolia garlands, antlers alongside brass candlesticks.
Dining Table: simple runner with wheat stalks in an ironstone pitcher; beeswax tapers in brass holders.
Kitchen Counter: dough bowl with apples or sweet potatoes; hydrangea stems in amber glass.
Entryway: oyster shell dish for keys, paired with acorns and a quilted throw on a bench.

Shop the Look

If you like the idea of decorating for fall using natural décor, but you don’t live in an area where you can find it on your own, I’m sharing some links for items that I recommend. I’ve curated a list of items you can use throughout the year, as well as some resources for natural items like shells and dried flowers.

You can find this list by clicking the image below or going directly to my curated LTK shop for fall.

Looking Ahead: A Season of Charm

Throughout this eight-week Home for the Holidays series we’ll explore a few Southern holiday recipes, decorate our tables for special holiday meals, and explore easy ways to show hospitality and care to those around us this season.

I invite you to come back each Saturday for the next installment of Home for the Holidays: A Southern Season of Charm. Be sure to bookmark this website in your browser and follow along on Instagram for updates. Links to the other segments in this series will be added to the bottom of this article as we make our way through the holidays season together.

Closing Thought

When we choose to use natural décor in our homes it honors the environment around us. We’re at a time in history when home décor is being treated as though it is disposable. Walk into any craft store, and you’ll find shelves up to the ceiling that are lined with hundreds of identical decorations that will likely only be used for one season before ending up in the trash.

I want to encourage you to consider buying quality items that can be used in different ways every season, instead of something that can only be used for a couple of weeks. For example: A dough bowl can be filled with eggs in the spring, shells in the summer, acorns in the fall, and ornaments at Christmas.

Investing in quality décor saves money in the long run and decreases mental and physical clutter in our homes. Dante Alighieri said, “Nature is the art of God,” and I hope you have been inspired to bring nature into your décor this fall.

Explore More from This Series

Each article in this series celebrates the beauty of Southern living through the seasons. You can find the full collection on the homepage under Home for the Holidays: A Southern Season of Charm.

October 4, 2025March 16, 2026

Abby Smolarsky5 Comments

How to Dry Whole Oranges for Christmas Decor

When I think of Christmas, I am reminded of fragrant oranges, spicy cloves, and warm cinnamon. For many years I have dried and preserved orange slices to use as Christmas decor. (See this article from 2020.) This year I decided that I would learn how to dry whole oranges, instead of just slices. Today I am sharing the simple steps to drying whole oranges.

The steps for drying whole oranges are very simple, but they are somewhat time-consuming. Today I am sharing the basic things you need to know about how to dry whole oranges. I chose to only dry half a bag of oranges. I wish I had done the entire bag! While it is a little lengthy to dry whole oranges, they turned out really well. I found other spots in the house that I would’ve placed more whole, dry oranges. Next year I’ll put the entire bag into the drying process.

Step One

Turn your oven on to the lowest temperature. My oven’s lowest temperature is 170*. My oven has convection bake and regular bake. I found that convection bake was more effective than the regular bake.

Step Two

Using a small paring knife, you will begin to cut into the orange rind from pole to pole. Don’t quite go all the way to the end/pole. Leave 1/4 of rind on each end of your cut. You’ll want to make sure your cut goes all the way into the pith/rind through to the orange flesh. However, once you start drying them, if you notice that you didn’t get all the way through to the orange flesh, you can take it back out of the oven and cut deeper before putting it back in.

You can see how I didn’t cut deep enough on this orange. You can cut deeper and put it back into the oven to finish drying.

Note: I experimented on one of my oranges to see if I could cut a design other than basic stripes. This doesn’t work as well. Using the method I described above, the oranges will develop gaps and vents, exposing the inner part of the fruit to be dried out. You can experiment as well, but in my experience, basic slits are best.

You can’t see them, but the slits into the orange are there.

Step Three

Once your oranges are cut, you need to decide how you want them to be placed into the oven. My oven is new, so I decided to line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and place them on top. Some people place them directly onto the racks. Other people place them onto metal cooling racks that have been put into a cookie sheet. A friend told me it would not affect drying time. You decide what’s best for you!

I used tongs to turn the oranges every couple of hours. If you notice a cut didn’t go all the way through, take it out to cut deeper before putting it back in again.

Step Four

Next you will leave the oranges in the oven to dry out until the rind is hardened and you believe that the fruit inside is dried out. I had been warned that this would take a long time, and it certainly did. On the first day, I dried them in the oven from 7 am to 7 pm. I didn’t want to leave the oven on overnight, so I took them out. The next day I dried them for another four hours. The third day, I dried them for the entire day again. All in all, I think this was about 24 hours of drying time. Which is why I wished I had dried the entire bag at once.

After Your Oranges are Dried

You can use your dried oranges in garlands, wreaths, or hanging on your Christmas tree. I have tucked dried oranges into my fireplace garland, along with pomegranates, feathers, holly berries, and pine cones. I added ribbon that resembled the colors of dried oranges and pomegranates.

When I dry orange slices, I will save them in an airtight bag to use for multiple years. Before I use dried slices again the next year, I inspect them to make sure there is no mold or anything undesirable on them. Since it is not possible to see inside and inspect whole oranges, I won’t be saving the dried whole oranges to use again next year.

Using natural elements in Christmas decor creates a rich and vibrant ambiance. Since a bag of oranges is relatively inexpensive, you really only need some time to create Christmas decor using whole dried oranges. Have you dried oranges before? Slices, or whole oranges? I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below. Or, post a photo on Instagram and tag me so that I can see your dried oranges.

Merry Christmas!

December 9, 2024March 16, 2026

Abby Smolarsky1 Comment

Creating a Cozy Holiday Experience for Guests

It’s less than twenty days until Christmas, and touches of holiday spirit can be felt in nearly every room in our home. One of the things we love most about the holidays is welcoming our friends, family, and neighbors into our home to celebrate the season with us. It’s important to us that our guests experience the contagious holiday excitement, while also feeling at ease. We truly want them to make themselves at home when they come through the door.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Kierra Todd with Redfin.com. Kierra asked me how we ensure a comfortable experience for our guests during the holidays. One way I do this is by mixing natural elements with conversation pieces. Today I am sharing our dining room decorated for a Christmas gathering. The vintage and antique Christmas decor we’ve collected over the years has started many conversations while gathered around the table with guests. And by collecting and foraging from our yard for decor, we ground the space and bring commonality.

Interior designer Abby Smolarsky at Belle Antiquarian, highlighted, “By mixing natural elements and conversation pieces, guests will feel the excitement of the season. In the dining room, guests will see magnolia and holly from our yard, as well as a tree sparkling with collected antique ornaments. It’s the perfect mixture for putting people at ease.”

Redfin.com

In the South we are blessed to have quite a few plants to forage at Christmastime. Our property boasts several magnolia species, abundant holly trees, and evergreen. I gather clippings and wire them together to adorn tables, buffets, and fireplace mantels throughout the house. Tucked here and there you will see some of my favorite pheasant feathers. My wonderful neighbor, Claire, gave me a bag of long-leaf pine cones that she had collected, which were the perfect finishing touch. Each region will have vegetation that can be brought inside for decor. If you don’t have anything in your yard, try asking a friend or neighbor if you can come clip a few things to add to your decor. Be sure to bring a basket, sharp clippers, and gloves to protect your hands from pointy leaves like holly.

Vintage and antique Christmas decor are among my favorite things to look for while treasure hunting. Throughout my years of selling antiques, I have collected some unusual and special ornaments. It’s fun to gaze and watch them sparkle on our dining room tree while gathered for a special meal. Part of the reason these ornaments are so special is because they were collected slowly over time and in various places. They each hold a story or memory, and they have kept the conversation flowing at the Christmas table on more than one occasion. It’s okay to start small with one or two baubles and add to them as the years go by. They’ll become part of your story as well.

The dining room feels festive, but also approachable. It’s doable. Anyone can gather foliage from their yard and bring it inside. Everyone can pick up a vintage ornament here and there. It’s how we share our space with the people we care about, sharing a little bit of our lives with theirs.

I’m honored to be featured on Redfin for this special holiday article. You can find the whole article and many more tips HERE.

No matter if you live in an apartment in Miami, FL, a rental home in Tuscaloosa, AL, or a
house in Bakersfield, CA, this guide will walk you through essential steps to declutter and clean your home, add festive touches, prepare for guests, and set the stage for holiday entertainment, ensuring your home is ready to impress and delight all season long.
Prepare Your Home for the Holidays: 7 Tips for a Festive Season | Redfin

December 5, 2024March 16, 2026

Abby SmolarskyLeave a comment

Ultimate Stocking Stuffer Guide for 2024

Every Christmas Eve we pass a drug store when we drive to church for our candlelight service. The parking lot is always packed with people rushing to buy last-minute stocking stuffers. I’ve created some stocking stuffer gift guides to help you prepare ahead of time and avoid the manic shopping the night before Santa arrives.

This article contains commissionable links and ads. You can shop for these exact items by clicking the pictures and links below. Below you will find stocking stuffers for men, ladies, teen boys, teen girls, and kids. Ladies, send these links to your husband to make sure your stocking isn’t empty on Christmas morning!

Stocking Stuffers for Men

Stocking Stuffers for Ladies

(Ladies, send this link to your husband so that your stocking isn’t empty on Christmas!

Stocking Stuffers for Teen Girls

Click the photo to shop for these items.

Teen Boy Stocking Stuffers

Stocking Stuffers for Kids

December 3, 2024

Abby SmolarskyLeave a comment

Thanksgiving in Our New Historic Home

Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away, and this will be our first year celebrating in our “new” historic home. I want to give a house update and share our Thanksgiving table with you.

We’ve been working hard to settle in and make our house feel like home. All of the moving boxes have been unpacked. Many of them had been in storage for four years, and thankfully we’ve only had two items broken. Our kitchen renovation is finished, and we’ve restored the flooring in several rooms. We’ve restored many of the original iron railings, and the rest will have to wait for warmer weather this spring. Outside, we’ve planted hundreds of perennials, including boxwoods, hydrangeas, and peonies, to name a few. If all goes well, there will be blooms throughout the yard from spring through summer next year.

We’re also researching the proper way to reglaze our original, working, sixteen pane windows. We’ll start the slow process of reglazing them when weather turns warmer. This is considered a maintenance task, and if we do it correctly, it won’t need to be done again for decades.

As we’re nearly the holiday season, we’re also preparing to host out-of-town guests. Several guest spaces have been completed to make them comfortable during their stay. Unfortunately, a custom sofa that we ordered in September still hasn’t arrived, which is creating stress as Thanksgiving draws near.

In spite of the lack of living room seating, there is a place for everyone at the dining room table. We’ll treasure the times spent with our friends and loved ones this season. We will be gathered around the table to enjoy delicious food and each others company. I’ve included a few photos of our Thanksgiving table this year. You will notice that there is a Christmas tree up in the dining room. There are a few reasons for this, which I can talk about in a future article, but let’s just say the turkey still tastes the same with the tree up!

To find the sources for everything I used to set our Thanksgiving table, you can visit this post in my LTK shop.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 12, 2024March 16, 2026

Abby Smolarsky2 Comments

Fun Holiday Activities for Young Adults and Families

This article contains commissionable links and ads.

I’m always looking for ways to keep the magic of Christmas alive now that our kids are young adults. Our youngest is in college, and our oldest lives about 3 hours away, so I try to make the most of our time when we’re all together as a family. I heard a quote a few years ago, and since then it has become something that I have become intentional about. The quote is, “Relationships are built on shared experiences.” I think this quote applies to many types of relationships, but isn’t it beautiful to think of in the context of families?

Relationships are built on shared experiences.

Where can we go together? What foods can we taste together? What games can we play together? How can we have FUN together? ‘Shared experiences’ have one thing in common, time spent together. Even when the quantity of time isn’t great, like when we are separated by distance, we can be intentional about the quality of the time spent together.

This brings me to my point of intentionally planning experiences this holiday season with our 20-something year olds and their significant others. My husband, Ken, and I are planning several things, but the one I want to share today is the white elephant advent calendar exchange we are planning for Thanksgiving. I use the term ‘white elephant’ loosely because we are really only using the rules of the game in this situation. We’re going to buy and wrap advent calendars to play a gift exchange with. Since our kids are in their young 20s, and therefore on a budget, Ken and I are going to buy all of the advent calendars. If we continue this game in years to come, we’ll up the fun-factor by asking everyone to contribute a wrapped one of their own.

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to play this game, because the advent calendars are needed before December 1st. We’re going to choose calendars that anyone would enjoy, regardless of who ends up with it. It will really be fun to see which ones are the favorites.

For now, I have rounded up sixteen of this year’s advent calendars that I think are the best. This list includes picks for young children, teens, women, and men. There are a couple of splurges, but most of them are priced $20-$25. Many of them have coupons to click before checkout, and several of them are reusable. I’m not going to share which ones off of this list that I’m buying in case one of our kids happens to read this article (unlikely), but please do come back and leave a comment if there’s one from the list that your family particularly enjoys.

You can click the photo above to find all 16 of these advent calendars in my LTK shop, or you can click the name below to go directly to the advent calendar’s website.

October 14, 2024

Abby SmolarskyLeave a comment

Unique Gift Ideas: Try the World Subscription Box

This article contains affiliate links and ads. You can find the subscription I’m featuring by clicking on the links and/or graphics throughout the article.

Every year around this time I publish articles with gift ideas. I like to share gift ideas for people who are hard to shop for, people who have everything, and for gifts that won’t end up at the bottom of the toy bin. I absolutely love giving consumable gifts. So when Try the World reached out to me, I was genuinely excited. Try the World is a gourmet tour around the world. Recipients get gourmet products from different countries like France, Japan, or Argentina every month. There are a dozen of the best gourmet and cultural finds in each box. I know first hand how memorable a gift like this is, because back when I was a kid one of my dad’s clients gave him a year-long subscription box that came once a month. Us four kids would crowd around and get really excited to see what came in his box each month. I remember the boxes that came and the sorts of things that were inside of them, but I can’t tell you what I got in my stocking that year for Christmas. These boxes make a big impression.

A subscription to Try the World is customizable to fit your needs. You choose the box size, the frequency, and select from 50 countries that you would prefer to send or receive snacks from. It’s really that easy.

Who would this type of gift be perfect for?

A couple’s gift (each box can be a date night activity to open and try the treats and snacks)
Foodies
Travel Lovers
Kids (My elementary aged niece and nephew would love this and remember it forever, just like I did.)
Grandparents who don’t really need anything specific
College age kids love snacks (My two told me they would love to get a box each month!)
A gift to yourself (Treat yoself!)

Snackbox 5 Snacks Subscription (Billed Sem…

A delicious selection of mouth-watering snacks from around the world—delivered to your … [More]

Price: $96.00

Buy Now

Try the World has generously given me a 20% off promo code for me to share with you. You can click HERE and use code HAPPYFALL for 20% off. Now is the perfect time to mark a person (or two) off of your holiday shopping list. I know a couple of kids who are going to be excited in a few months when their first box from Auntie Abby arrives. I hope you love it as much as I do!

(Want more gift ideas for the people who are hard to shop for or the person who already has everything? Use the search box to the right and search “gifts”!)

September 25, 2024

Abby SmolarskyLeave a comment

Christmas Running Playlist

If you’ve been following along on Instagram, then you know that I decided about a month ago to set a goal of being a “runner.” I was running regularly until about 10 years ago when I got a stress fracture. Afterwards, I never got back into it. I do cardio exercise regularly, but it hasn’t been in the form of running.

Click the photo above to find this playlist on Apple Music.

I found a walking-to-running plan on Pinterest, and I thought I would give it a try. My husband and I weight train 5-6 days a week, so I would be lying if I gave the impression that I was starting from zero activity level. Even so, I have found it to be very difficult. About a month into the plan, I hit a mental wall. The plan was requiring a set number of minutes running, then a set number walking, then a different set number of minutes running, etc. I was finding that counting the minutes until I was “supposed” to start walking again (before running again, LOL) was actually making it more difficult for me.

So I’ve set the Pinterest plan to the side, and I am just working on increasing the number of minutes per day that I am able to run. I am allowing a rest day in between each run until I have more endurance. In the meantime, I’ve signed up to run a 5k on Christmas Eve. I put together a Christmas Eve running playlist to listen to while I train.

I use Apple Music, and I will link it HERE if you want to use it as well. (Apple Music comes free with my cell phone service, sorry Spotify users.)

November 6, 2022November 7, 2022

Abby SmolarskyLeave a comment

Style it Saturday, Winter Holiday Finds

Hi, friends! Welcome back to another edition of Style it Saturday! Today I am sharing some special finds that would work for the holidays and through winter. As always, you can click the photos to be taken directly to each of these outfits on my LTK.

First up is a holiday party outfit. Together these pieces make for a classic, sophisticated look. Separately, you’ll find that you can dress them up or down for countless looks.

Next, here is a cozy, casual look for the holidays. This would be perfect for running errands or catching a movie.

Casual winter outfit — Click the photo above to find these exact pieces.

Finally, here are some must-have winter accessories. These classic pieces can be used year after year.

That’s all for today! Be sure to follow me on LTK, and never miss a deal or outfit.

November 5, 2022November 5, 2022

Abby SmolarskyLeave a comment

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Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away, and this will be our first year celebrating in our “new” historic home. I want to give a house update and share our Thanksgiving table with you.

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Hi, friends! Welcome back to another edition of Style it Saturday! Today I am sharing some special finds that would work for the holidays and through winter. As always, you can click the photos to be taken directly to each of these outfits on my LTK.

Share this:

Like this: