Christmas Candies, Confections, and Crafts

It's the holidays, and you just can't have Christmas Eve without egg nog, sappy music, family games, and of course a plethera of treats to munch on. So I've set to work in the kitchen over the past week. I've made fudge (which never did set past a gloop stage...any tips?), 3 batches of mini banana bread loaves, toffee (the first thing to get completely devoured), and seven dozen snowball cookies (aka Russian Tea Cakes, aka Mexican Wedding cookies, etc). I've used several pounds of butter, chocolate, and walnuts, and almost an entire 5 lb bag of sugar, plus I've cleaned the kitchen at least half a dozen times (so why does it still look like a blizzard of confectioner sugar?) and had a resultant stomach ache every night since.

I had planned to make all these tasty delights in time for our party on Saturday, but you know, falling down the stairs forced me to slow down a little and take a break. The party was a great success--we had a good turnout of about a dozen people, which was just the right amount. And nobody seemed to mind that my fudge was more gloppy than anything else and that I didn't serve more homemade cookies, a veggie platter, pesto cheese tarts, or chips and dip. Everybody brought something tasty to share and I didn't have to stress out. For the record, we were planning on visiting the dentist soon anyway and both of us have Weight Watchers on our radar for next year.

So not only did I feel the need to deliver plates of goodies to our neighbors and friends, but I had to stamp too. I made these cute little cocoa pouches with snowman tags and a candy cane. There's just something addicting about this kind of activity that makes it really hard for me to stop making them...

And lastly, here's our tree. We are hoping to find our remote control tomorrow buried underneath presents, because we can't think of anywhere else it could possibly be!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!