Plum Pudding

Last holiday season, we had just got home from visiting Santa and Danny and I were standing in the kitchen listening to a holiday record, talking about all the things to cook and bake for the upcoming Christmas weekend and I got to thinking. Our Christmas traditions are so heavily surrounded by food. For me, it has never been Christmas Morning without Nene’s pecan rolls and Danny feels the same way about Christmas Eve dinner and G’Ma’s Mostaccioli- and it sparked an idea.

What about a Christmas story all about the holiday traditions and the food we eat. That same night I ran to my computer and started writing. I had the outline of a poem by the next day. The story would start on Thanksgiving to kick off the holiday season, go all the way through Christmas and end on New Year’s Eve. With each part of the story I talk about what recipe we were making or baking and on the facing page, I would share the recipe.

That same Christmas my grandfather was coming to spend the holiday in our home. I asked my mother what I should make for him that might be special and make the holiday feel like he was still in his childhood home or my grandmother was still around. She suggested Plum Pudding, she told me Nene would make it from time to time because it was Poppop’s favorite recipe from his mother, but it was kind of tough to make. I have all of my grandmothers recipes as she passed away in 2017, and as fate would have it, I had her old plum pudding tin. I had used it before but never for Plum Pudding.

I secretly made it for Poppop and presented it to him after Christmas dinner. He immediately looked at me and said, “Plum Pudding, I haven’t had this in 70 years.” It felt so special, and I knew this was the title for my book.

I felt like the majority of my part was done and now it was time to find an illustrator and bring this book to life. I reached out to Elise Fehr of Hip Hooray Studios. I had met Elise through Alt Summit and she posted a cut paper Christmas pudding and it was just perfect.

We got to work in February, I gave Elise some inspiration of our real life Holiday season, photos of the cookies we baked and some inspirational holiday images that I just loved and we got going. We went through lots of different options to land on the size and structure of the book. You typically don’t see a 56 page children’s book, but as Elise was illustrating, everything needed to be on it’s own page and have a moment.

She worked through both the icons of the recipes and the full page scenic illustrations for the poem. As she illustrated, I designed. I was on the formatting side, plugging in all her art work, creating patterns and putting it all together. It really became a huge collaboration piece and was SO MUCH FUN to do with her.

Nearing our October 1st deadline we worked through packaging, made stickers and tape and all the less serious things that we just added fun. We have been living in Christmas land for the past nine months and even though the creation part is over, we are so elated to have a hard copy in hand and bring it into the holiday season, We can just imagine this book poking out of stockings, living on the bookshelves or a new addition to your cookbooks.

This was a dream come true and we are so excited for you to experience the holiday magic that is Plum Pudding.