Christmas Is Coming!!!

Yes, Christmas is almost upon us and as much as I would love to delay it a least another week I can't. I did get most of my work done since the last post. I changed the calendar (I know about time, it used to be stuck at June), I changed the flag to a Christmas themed one, the tree is decorated and the house smells like cookies. I am however nowhere near done, at least it feels that way.

The tree was one of the things I really slacked on this year. It finally got decorated and it looks pretty. The tree is an artificial one, I can't have a live one because I'm allergic :( This one is nice it has glitter and pine cones and fake snow in it. Almost all of the ornaments on it are handmade. There are some clay and some painted. The majority are plastic canvas. There are even some cookies ones, the kind that smell like cinnamon and gingerbread. I try to avoid putting a lot of breakable ornaments on the tree because I'm afraid the cats will knock them off and break them. So that's my tree...all done.

Then came the cookies. We have a tradition of baking a ton, and I do mean a ton, of cookies.

I bake a least five different kinds of cookies a year. This year there's peanut butter kiss cookies, sugar cookies, thumb print cookies (these have different kinds of jellies in the middle), and rugelach (a cream cheese dough cookie with raisins and nuts and sugar in the middle.) I still have to cut out and decorate and bake the sugar cookies but the rest are all done and in boxes for Christmas day.

If you like peanut butter kiss cookies here's the easiest way to make them: Buy a package of peanut butter cookie mix (any kind will do, this year I used target brand.) Make the mix according to the package directions. Roll the dough into one inch balls and coat them with some sugar. Bake them in the oven at the package temperature 8-12 min or until the cookies look like they are cracking. Take them off the cookie sheet and gently push an unwrapped Hershey Kiss in the middle of the cookies. Allow them to cool until the chocolate kiss has hardened back up and enjoy. I still have wrapping to do and some more cleaning to do to get the house ready but other than that I think I'm almost done.