Does anyone else out there struggle with gathering the gumption to put away the Christmas decorations?  I mean, I used to be the crazy nut who took everything down Christmas day.  But now, I’m not sure if it’s laziness or just not wanting Christmas to be officially over – I just can’t find the get up and go to dig out the totes and wrap everything up.

*sigh*

Today is one of those days I’ll have to either say, “It’s fine; it will wait,” OR pull myself together and just get it done.  Maybe if I do enough laundry, I can justify being simply too busy to take down the tree…

Well, looks like we’ll have a white Christmas afterall here on the Front Range.  Sadly absent for our family (for now, at least) is the childish wonder and all that sneaking down to catch Santa at 2am.  But I believe Santa is watching us, nonetheless.

And while I sit at my laptop clicking away at the keys, there is a spicy fragrance of chili wafting from the stovetop and pie crust waiting to be rolled out for French silk and pecan sitting on the counter.  Listening to my daughters, laughing and gossiping and sharing their lives while wrapping their last minute Christmas purchases, I fully realize that this holiday season is the best our family has celebrated in years.  And that gifts are really a matter of recognizing what’s good in your life and really, truly appreciating all that you have.

Merry Christmas,
Jami

As a quick preface, let me point out that the below piece is written from a place of wry amusement and not irritation or anger.  I’m smirking and feeling kind of lucky to be married to such an utter, unabashed dork.    In fact, I suspect if he was cooler, I would like him heaps and heaps less.

Last night, in a move sharply reminiscent of a 1st grader needing cupcakes for class, my husband asked me (at 9pm, mind you) if I would mind baking some cookies for our local gas station employees for their holiday party today.  And if I didn’t mind, could I bake 2 kinds?  Tonight?  So he could take them on his way to work in the morning?

See, it appears he informed the staff there that his wife would be more than happy to bake a few kinds of cookies for their party.  No, he doesn’t work there – he just buys his coffee there every morning and is therefore considered a “regular.”  And as a regular, earlier this month he was luckily given the prize of a sadly dropped-then-broken 5 pound Hershey bar for “free,” provided he was willing to bring in some treats made from said chocolate heavy hitter.  He made sure those ladies knew I’d be more than happy to whip up some goodies for them, then proudly lugged home his sugary trophy.  Now, I feel it’s prudent to impart to you, dear reader, that I have already baked 2 batches of cookies as well as handed over 2 kinds of candy to pay this Hershey bar’s ransom.  And I kind of figured that we were pretty much paid up… buuuuut I guess not. 

Anyway.

This is the man who shells out money to the kid paying for a soda or candy at the counter and ends up a buck short.  He’s also the man who rescues damsels (and dudes) in distress alongside the road in crappy weather while other drivers just keep on driving past.  He’s the guy who built me tables for my outdoor kitchen, too, and if the man needs some damned cookies to be popular, well then, I am more than happy to oblige – murder free.

Is it weird for a thirty-something woman to be this stoked for Christmas?  Because if it is, feel free to call me Ding-A-Ling the Christmas Bell!  If I’m not whistling “haul out the holly…” I’m singing Silent Night (in German, if you please).  I’ve baked cookies and stitched stockings and trimmed the tree.  And there isn’t a minute that passes where I don’t breathe deeply and say, “I LOVE Christmas!”

However…  I have to tell you something, an admission if you will. Yesterday I wrapped presents and the “sparse” display of gifts, in comparison to years gone by, left me feeling sad and a little bit guilty.  I looked at the bags of gifts and had a brief moment of feeling like ”I am a miserly skinflint!  Change my name to Eboneezer Scrooge because that’s all there is kids, and there ain’t no more!” all the while cackling gleefully in my penny pinching, money-grubbing, hoarding heyday - far too tight to spend so much as a plug nickel on my loved ones.  I mean, DOES handcrafted say “cheapskate” as well as “love?”

Yes, I know its silly. I know that our family’s Christmas is STILL excessive compared to some, though not as over the top as others.  Ours is on the lean side of excess, but still, probably excessive when you consider that Laura Ingalls got her own cup to drink out of one year for Christmas - and that was it.  And I fully realize my daughters do not need mountains of meaningless plastic junk, purchased merely to fill up our under-the-tree real estate.  I also realize that big kid gifts tend to be smaller but more expensive than little girl presents like Barbie yachts and the Barbie mansion.

So, for right now, I’m steering clear of the stores to avoid any guilt purchasing and trying to keep my focus on what this season means to me: family, friends, love and lots and lots of cookies.

Today we had our annual family holiday cookie bake at my sister’s house – WAY a lot of fun!  Each person brings all the stuff to make whatever kind of cookie they are craving and we bake until we’re pretty much sick to death of sugar.  LOL 

This year, no one discussed back and forth what was being baked, so we ended up with Julie and I BOTH doing sugar cookies.  This is in addition to the double batch I had already baked at home!   I think our snowflakes cookies turned out SO cute, though they would have looked “cleaner” had I used royal icing instead of buttercream.  Funny think about royal icing, though – it looks gorgeous but tastes positively wretched.

Anyway, here are the ones that Skye and I decorated – Miss Julie’s needed to cool before frosting…  Click on images to enlarge, if ya wanna…

Finally, I have some pix to post of the daggone cookies!  I’m not done with sugar cookies yet since Skye has specifically requested snowflake shapes, but I’m done with the ornament shapes and the santas (thank goodness!).  Here are a few photos of our successful dough (I didn’t figure you needed a picture of the cookie flop from earlier this week…):

These are my grandparents, married during WWII and still so in love today, in their 80's

Here’s hoping we can all be so lucky!

Good gravy!  There’s only 9 days till Christmas!

Today, inspite of the gray skies and my yen for snuggling up on the couch to read Erin’s book, I’m making a few more gifts and trying not to recreate the sugar cookie fiasco from the other day.  Fun, fun, fun!  And I’m being only slightly sarcastic because it truly is fun to make gifts and bake cookies.  It’s just that with one of those hard-to-put-down type books laying around, you really just want to read it till you know how it ends!  Alas, that’s just not how today is going to happen.

I still need to wrap a few gifts to put them into the Santa Sacks under the tree, as well as whip up some buttercream for cookies.  Then we have a 4:30 appt with financial aid for Gypsy’s school and all the rush hour traffic that entails.  Add to that dinner, tidying up and decorating cookies, this evening is pretty tied up.  BUT, once the furor of the day dies down and the family settles in to watch television after supper, then I’ll get my book time in!

I don’t have much time for posting today, since I’m busy reading the next best seller by my famous author friend, Erin.    So sorry to disappoint y’all, but this might make up for it some:

Go to www.elfyourself.com – have a few photos of family/friends you want to blackmail handy, upload them and create your own dancing elves!  It’s fun, hysterically funny and good for hours of cheap (AKA “free”) entertainment!  Oh yeah, and if you’ve had a couple cups of coffee, pee first to avoid puddles in front of your laptop…

Have a wonderful day!

For those of you who’ve spent much time with me, you know that I like the F-word.  A lot.  I’m not talking “Flop,” either.  And for those of you who don’t know me well, this probably is a bit of a surprise – I try to hold off  cussing like that in front of comp’ny…

Anyway, when I followed the Wilton Cake Decorating people’s recipe for sugar cookies yesterday and ended up with a ginormous ugly sugar cookie pancake instead of adorable little Santa Clauses, its no head-scratcher that the sounds emanating from my kitchen were less ‘tidings of comfort and joy’ than ‘truck stop buffet.’  The pancake/cookie didn’t even taste all that good (which is sad because the dough tastes FANTASTIC – ask anyone here).

You’d think that a prestigious company like Wilton’s would know a thing or two about baking, but apparently they are more of an ‘after it’s baked’ sort of group.  I mean, the sugar cookie recipe was tied to a Wilton’s snowflake cookie cutter for pete’s sake!  Regardless, it serves me right for not sticking with the tried and true family recipe for sugar cookies in the first place.  So, upward and onward…  Today that dough will get yet another liberal dose of flour so it can be rolled into snickerdoodles.  And our old standby recipe will get dusted off so we can make our cutouts.  *sigh* 

Yessirree, F is for “Flop” and for that other word, which I won’t bother mentioning here.

For anyone interested, I’ve always had good luck with this recipe:

Aunt Sue Eckenrod’s Christmas Butter Cookies

1 cup butter (use margarine for soft cookies, butter for crisper ones)
1 egg
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour (flour moisture varies, so use a smidge more flour if your dough spreads too much upon baking)

Mix together, roll out on a lightly floured board.  Cut into desired shapes and bake at 375 on a lightly greased baking sheet for 6-8 minutes.

Frost/decorate when cooled.