FOR ERIC AND DARIEN ROZELL, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS THE HOLIDAY FRENZY.
The couple plan for this season year-round, collecting honey from their own apiary; making raspberry, peach, and strawberry jam during the height of the summer season; wrapping homemade salted caramels; and infusing vanilla extract in tiny amber jars months ahead of Christmas.
"It is really important to us that our boys think of Christmas as a time when our family shares some of our favorite traditions with others," Darien says. "We're curating, crafting, and making things from scratch with our own hands all year long in an effort to share the fruits of our labor with the people we love."
The family's labor of love since 2016 has also been making their Saratoga Springs, New York, home an expression of their priorities. "We were high school sweethearts who grew up here, but after we got married, our work carried us first to Seattle and then to Boston," says Darien, a former magazine editor. "But when we were expecting our first child, we realized we wanted to be closer to our families-and to nature. We were both working remotely at the time, so we decided it was time to move back home."
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