Longing for those carefree days of summer vacation? You can bring vacation home during the long, cold winter months with these tips to recreate vacation in your own home and bring travel home.

The summer brings endless opportunities for bringing your vacation experiences to your home. Themed parties, sunbathing in the garden, and sipping on cocktails all feel better when it’s warm outside. Everyone is more social, and the long days encourage going out and socializing. Winter, on the other hand, can feel dull and grey in comparison. Everyone tries to stay cozy inside their homes, and the drizzly weather can mean that vacations and sun feel like a thing of the past. However, being inside more doesn’t have to mean being bored. It’s easy to recreate the carefree days of your vacations without leaving your living room. In fact, it can be fun to spend those snowy or rainy days when you wish you were on vacation instead. Here’s how to get started to bring vacation home this winter.

Create a Theme to Bring Vacation Home

First, decide where you want to pretend to go. If there are several of you at home, why not take turns picking a destination? The person in charge should organize or delegate tasks depending on whether they want it to be a surprise or not.

How far you want to take it is really up to you. If you fancy going camping, put your tent indoors, play some rain music, and snuggle up in your sleeping bags while making s’mores. If you’re a skiing fan and it’s snowy outside, wrap your kid up in snow pants and a toddler winter jacket and go sledding, and then come home to eggnog and fondue.

Discover creative ways to bring a vacation feel to the long winter months. Photo by master1305 via iStock by Getty Images

Plenty of museums and institutions offer online tours or experiences throughout the year. If you want to recreate a day in a big city, why not see what you can find to keep you entertained?

Be adventurous as you like. It’s all part of the fun. If you end up making a complete mess, it might be worth getting a professional cleaner for after the fun is over—after all, you wouldn’t need to clean if you were on vacation, and it can also take the stress out of hosting.

Switch Up Your Food

One of the best experiences you can have when traveling is trying delicious food. Recreating those new dishes is a great way to start if you’re looking to recreate some of that culinary holiday magic at home.

First, choose how you want to serve your meal. You can do a buffet-style option, where all your guests bring a different dish, or have a cooking party, where part of the fun is making the food with your friends or family.

If you’re not brave enough to start from scratch, you could order a cook-at-home ingredient box or sign up for an online or in-person cooking class for a specific cuisine.

If your chosen country has a specific holiday near the time of your celebration, why not look to recreate its traditional dishes? For example, the traditional Italian dinner at Christmas consists of pasta, meat, and vegetables, finished with a slice of panettone and a coffee.

Remember to bake something special for your themed dinner, such as Panettone for an Italian Christmas meal. Photo by ViewApart via iStock by Getty Images

The final touch is to decorate the table in the style of the country you’ve chosen, right down to the cutlery—learning chopstick etiquette, for example, will be a great, authentic experience and will prepare you for your next trip to Asia!

Share Memories to Bring Vacation Home

Plenty of us take photos on holiday, but how often do we look back at them? Gather your friends and ask them to contribute several holiday shots. Why not ask them to provide photos along a theme? For example, everyone could bring their best food photo, favorite landscape, funniest photo, etc.

Not only does this provide you with some great photos to look at, but your friends will also enjoy telling the stories behind the photos and reminiscing about the trips that they’ve been on. Nostalgia is powerful, after all—the Southampton Nostalgia Scale research shows that nostalgia can counteract boredom, anxiety, and loneliness. Perfect for a rainy winter afternoon.

Sharing photos can be a great way to share travel memories. Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

When You Want to Bring Vacation Home During the Long Winter Months

We hope you follow these tips to help bring vacation home during the long winter months—and we invite you to check out Wander to start planning your next real escape to one of our favorite destinations that offers great wow moments.

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