Christmas 2010

So as promised here are some photos of the cookies made by my mother and myself.

Our Sugar Cookies

Clockwise from Top: Chocolate Ginger, Spritz, Pecan Sandies, Orange Chocolate, and Thumbprint

Coconut Macaroons and Lemon Sables

Peanut Butter Nutella Sandwiches, Chocolate Crinkles, Russian Teacakes, Toffee Squares

Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheels, Peanut Butter Logs, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, Rum Balls

The PB Nutella Sandwiches were a new addition this year, and let me say they were a surprisingly huge hit.  We always make the PB logs but the recipe makes more than enough, so this year we decided to make half the peanut butter dough into regular pb cookies.  I thought that was kind of boring so I suggested we sandwich two cookies with some Nutella.  They passed the taste test with flying colors, and ended up being the first cookies gone on Christmas eve.   If you want any of the recipes for the above cookies I will definitely post them, I just do not particularly want to post all 16 recipes if people won't utilize them!  In addition to the pictures above my mom also made rosette's but I forgot to snap a photo of them :( 

My Christmas was low key in the sense that we did what we always do!  Christmas Eve with my dad's family, this year that meant hosting 21 adults and 5 little kids, then presents in the AM with my brother and parent's followed by an early dinner at my Aunt's House.  All in all it was a great christmas filled with family, great food and great fun.  

After dinner and several hours of playing Kinect on Xbox I headed out to the bars with some friends.  This is something that Sam and I have recruited people to do for the past few Christmas Days and it always leads to a lot of fun.  I really enjoy going out to the bars, but not when it is so packed that you have to wait in line outside in the cold to get in.  If you have the same feelings I highly recommend hitting the bars on Christmas day as they are about 1/3 full as normal!!!  We headed to Stella's pretty late actually, unfortunately so late that we missed 2-4-1's which end at 12 AM :(  Overall fun night, hopefully we can recruit even more people next year!

The rest of the week was spent relaxing :)  Sam starts chiropractic school next week and I just finished my first semester of grad school so we were both ready to do almost nothing!!  This nothing included playing with old toys (McDonald's Hamburger maker and Dr. Dreadful), walks, football, movie marathon (Little Fockers, How do you know?, and the Tourist), sleeping, drinking and cooking.  

I spent New Years Eve over at my friend Brandon's house.  He and my other friend Lindsey had made us steaks and some other goodies, YUM!  We spent the evening eating, drinking cocktails, wine and champagne and playing games.  It was a great night, so great that I fell asleep at approximately 12:05 AM.  At least I made to New Years though right?!?!

I have break for the next two weeks and I plan on spending my time working, working to find a new job, and cooking/baking.  Sam gave me a whole grain bread cookbook so plan on looking for some bread photos soon!!  

Hope everyone had a great holiday and happy New Years!