For a long time, the dream was just a feeling. Something I carried with me. Something I tried to recreate in small ways—the memory of Christmas music playing on the CD player in my parents kitchen, the Martha Stewart decorations we bought at K-Mart to spoil ourselves with a second tree in the small basement where we would watch our favorite shows, or the scent of nutmeg and vanilla in the homemade old fashioned donuts my mom and I used to make when I couldn't have been over the age of three.

I yearn for these moments to find me again.

And then, slowly, it started to take shape. Only this time I realized I'm not the three-year-old standing on the chair at the edge of the counter in our old galley kitchen, I'm my mother. I have three-year-old's of my own. Christmas magic is no longer happening to me, I'm the one creating it.

So when my husband and I (ok, mostly me), found an old farm just outside of the cities in Corcoran, MN, all those feelings—the dream of creating that longed for, nostalgic Christmas, began to root itself into something real.