Sweet Treats

I have meant to get on and post this for two weeks, but things have been a little busy around my house. We are getting ready for the holidays, I have been working on Christmas cards, letter, and making gifts, my dad gave me my Cricut Expression Christmas present early (which took up about three days of time trying to get set up, experiment with, and use) my Internet somehow started to have advertising pop-ups all over, and my laptop suddenly stopped talking to the wireless printer (an of course my husband has waited until December to print of information needed for tax prep and needs it now!) so I have spent lots of time on the computer creating and trying to get everything working properly.

Almost every year since before my husband and I were married we have gotten together with his family to make cookies for the Christmas holiday. It started out as just a small little afternoon gathering to let the kids have fun cutting out sugar cookies and has grown into a whole weekend of baking, cutting, decorating, dipping, and packing the goodies up to share. My sister-in-law even mixes and cooks a few days before to prepare for the weekend.

Each year I pick a new recipe to try (and usually flop) for the weekend. With the invention of Pinterest this has grown easier to find, but harder to choose just one to try. This year I tried two. One was a simple wreath decorating idea with a shortbread cookie and the other was called a hot cocoa cookie. I am happy to say I did okay. The hot cocoa cookie did not look just like the Pinterest version, but it was okay and I managed to only brown the marshmallow on top, not burn it like I have been known to do with S'Mores brownies. So now I think I have a new recipe to add to the festivities.

The cookies are nice to have and share, but the best part of the weekend is opening up our home to family and having the time with them. We have been doing it the first weekend in December for a few years now so the women bake and the men go deer hunting and come in for lunch and cookie dough for a break from the cold. My girls get to spend time with their aunts, uncles, and cousins and learn about baking (which is something I do occasionally, but not as often as my husband wants or as good as my sister-in-laws.) It is a tradition that I hope continues with our family for years to come.

The 'tail' end - comment about some fun holiday activities you do with your family to celebrate the togetherness of the season.

I am also posting some collages I made on Smilebox to show the fun we have :)