First we went to Christmas Eve service Saturday afternoon. Yes, I know, it wasn't Christmas Eve on Saturday, but the church where S&A serve and lead in worship need to offer multiple service dates, times and locations in order to safely and meaningfully give as many people as possible a place to worship and celebrate the gift of the Christ child. It was great that A was able to join us after her responsibilities were done for that service, and it was great to worship with B, and S&K and see little J-man afterwards. Felt like Christmas!
And then yesterday we got together at S&K's for dinner and gifts and games. Here are a few pics of their table.
Or how about this ingeniousness?
Wrapping paper that K cut down to size with a table saw plus a bowl of silver ornaments.
I tell ya what! Between E's Christmas table last weekend and S's table yesterday, the bar has been raised mighty high for this old gal to live up to for Christmas Eve Open House and Christmas Day! Hopefully I have learned a trick or two from these young pinnin' ladies!
Now for a glimpse of our Christmas cookies.
Thursday after work, we put these four Christmas doughs together:
- Gingerbread cookies by King Arthur Flour because it just isn't Christmas without gingerbread!
- Sugar cookies using this chocolate chip cookie recipe with two modifications - no chocolate chips and increasing the flour to 3 cups so that the dough is strong enough for cutout cookies. See my youngest, B, says that she likes the dough for chocolate chip cookies, better than she likes normal sugar cookie dough, but she never wants the chocolate chips part. So whenever I make chocolate chip cookies for G, I will reserve a bit of dough to make a few plain cookies for B without chips. I think it is the brown sugar in the dough that she likes, so I basically made a brown sugar cutout sugar cookie dough. Did any of that make sense?
- Peanut blossom cookies just like this Land O' Lakes recipe, but with one change - or really two changes. I am not a Hershey kisses fan, so we make them with Dove chocolates - milk for the folks who like milk chocolate and dark chocolate with almonds for the folks who like dark like S&A do.
- Oatmeal cookies because they are the favorite of my son, D.
And Friday after work, we baked 3 of these doughs (all but the oatmeal, because we like drop cookies baked as close to eating as possible).
Sugar before...
and Sugar after...
Let's get a close up on those 3 on the right...
BIG, right?
Remember this post that included coloring Santa faces? THOSE are the cookies that cutter made!
Crazy big! But they did turn out kinda cute when all finished...
But back to baking....like gingerbread boys...
...including littler ones just about the right size for J-man's hands. And here they are all dressed up!
Gingerbread boys just make me smile!
And here are some of the peanut butter blossoms our way...
Ooey-gooey melty chocolateness but the Dove logo is still visible...
Yum!
We have snowflakes...
...and ornaments...
...both pics being photo bombed by gingerbread boys! How dare those boys?! Ha-ha! I told you that gingerbread boys made me smile!
And here's the collection all together!
Not sure who will eat a Santa over the next couple of days, but we will see! 1 hour to Christmas Eve!
Merry Christmas Eve Eve!
Great Job Deb!!!!!
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