The Christmas Recipe
About The Christmas Recipe
The Christmas Recipe is a heartfelt animated short film inspired by my own holiday childhood memories. The film opens on the night before Christmas, and a young girl named Maya carefully tip-toes around her home. With a plan to surprise her parents with the perfect Christmas breakfast, she quietly enlists the help of her younger brother and sister, Graham and Lilly.
Once they are in the kitchen, each sibling begins to make their ideal breakfast. But what begins as a thoughtful surprise for their parents turns into a chaotic mess. Will the siblings be able to salvage their dishes and save their Christmas morning breakfast?
About the Process
For me, I wanted to focus on appealing visual storytelling that the audience would fall in love with. From concept to final cut, The Christmas Recipe used groundbreaking technology to streamline and enhance every step of the six-week creative process.
The team’s deep understanding of the technical and creative aspects of innovative filmmaking allowed us to push new workflows while staying true to the emotional core of the story. With our shared approach, I meticulously crafted a heartfelt experience where the tools serve the story versus the story serving the tools.
Platforms included: Dall-E, Canva, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Da Vinci Resolve, Eleven Labs, Audition, Luma, Pika
Director’s Statement
As the oldest of six kids, Christmas morning was usually chaotic with my family, but I always woke up to my mom lovingly preparing a breakfast feast for us.
But there was a huge catch: my siblings and I weren’t allowed to touch (let alone open) any of our presents under the tree or inside our stockings until we sat down as a family and ate our breakfast.
At the time, this ritual felt like a twisted kind of torture. I wanted to be like the kids in the movies who would run straight to the tree and madly open all of their presents in a flurry. But looking back, I realize how meaningful it was. It wasn’t just about delaying our instant (and fleeting) gratification, but we were also learning the value of togetherness and savoring the smaller and less dramatic Christmas morning moments.
This project is dedicated to my younger siblings and is a tribute to how much they each impacted me growing up. As a creator, I wanted to capture the joy, chaos, and warmth of sibling dynamics during the holidays. Maya’s desire for perfection, Graham’s enthusiasm, and Lilly’s mayhem mirror the beautiful imperfections of my own siblings and the ways we have collaborated and clashed, but ultimately (and sometimes begrudgingly) come back together. It’s a story about embracing imperfection, celebrating teamwork, and finding magic in the messiness of life.
At its core, The Christmas Recipe is a love letter to the chaotic beauty of family and a celebration of the small moments that shape us. I hope this film reminds audiences to savor the connections that matter most, not just during the holidays but every day. Whether it’s a lump of burnt bacon or a stack of perfectly flipped pancakes, the memories we create together are the true gifts of any season.
Role: Director, Writer, & Producer
