'Tis the season to be jolly! I've come back to Korea for the winter. It's always so nice to see Christmas trees lit up in stores with carols playing wherever you go. I didn't have much planned out for this break since I already knew it would be busy with meeting up with family and celebrating various things.
But as I've posted multiple times in the past, our family has a tradition for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I bake a Christmas-y dessert, and on the morning of the 25th, I wake up to a little post-it note signaling the start of the scavenger hunt for my present.
This year, I took the baking up a notch and decided to create a whole two-layer cake. It was a gingerbread cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. I used a recipe that I found on Pinterest (if you want to try it yourself, you can find it here). I reduced the amount of sugar I used in the cake itself because I knew the frosting's sweetness would compensate for that. My family doesn't particularly have a sweet tooth either.
I had so much fun decorating; I went all out with cinnamon sticks, rosemary leaves, cranberries, and nutmeg. It truly looked and tasted like Christmas.
After that was done, I went to sleep dreaming about what fun adventure my dad would have come up with this year. And boy, was I in for a long scavenger hunt! There were more than 20 clues that would lead me to different rooms and corners of the house. Some of them really left me thinking. I did have to wake my dad up for some hints, but I was proud of how much I solved on my own.
And when I finally solved the last clue, I found two very cute gifts! The vintage-looking black box is a sticker creator. If I put together a design on an app connected to this sticker maker, I can send it, and it will instantly print the sticker. It's so cute when it's doing that -- it's like a pocket-sized printer! This was also my first Christmas as an adult. So my dad gifted me 'the scent every lady should have' (as he put it). I really did like the smell :)
This year, I decided to spice things up a bit by adding one more event to Christmas Day. I've been meaning to do some caroling (and just singing, too) so I created a whole Christmas Concert program and 'invited' my parents to come and watch a 'famous singer on tour in Korea' (a.k.a., me). I really like doing these pretend concerts for my parents. It's more fun than just plainly doing some karaoke. I even made a poster of all the songs that I sang! I distributed them to my parents as a token of gratitude for coming to the concert. Another successful concert :)
I can't believe that there's only a week left before 2022 becomes history. I'll be doing a lot of reflecting and thinking about what 2023 would have in store for me. I'm so very grateful that I have my loving family to go forward with.