Merry Christmas!

Today my 12 Days of Christmas series is coming to an end!

It’s been fun sharing some of my favorite recipes, traditions, and tips with you. And, of course, the giveaways were a lot of fun, too!

After a few weeks of preparations, decorating, and baking, I am getting ready to relax and spend the holiday weekend with my friends and family. I’m looking forward to a break and some time to unwind.

Today, there won’t be any new recipes or tips. Instead, I just wanted to give you a glimpse into my world at Christmas time with a few of the pictures I have taken as I’ve been preparing for the holidays. I’d also like to wish you and your family a very merry Christmas!

Last Minute Cookie Designs (WFMW)

Christmas is just a few short days away… Can you believe it?

While I find it amusing to spend hours upon end decorating cookies, I know that not everyone shares my love of piping bags and royal icing. I’m OK with that. If you can’t be bothered with worrying about outlining and flooding cookies or mixing up a rainbow of icing colors, then this post is for you!

Yellowdog’s Christmas Guide (12 Days of Christmas 2010)

You may not realize it, but Yellowdog (my yellow lab) is quite the accomplished writer.

When we were first married, we couldn’t think of anything to write in a Christmas letter to our friends and family. After hours of writing and re-writing the letter, with little to say, we ended up scrapping our version entirely. Instead, as a joke, we started writing the letter from Yellowdog’s perspective. After all, she’s part of the family, and her take on things is always more exciting than ours. We’ve been married for over 5 years now, and Yellowdog just finished writing her 6th Christmas letter!

So, today, I thought I’d let her take over and share a few of her favorite holiday tips, from the doggy perspective, of course!

Spiced Butter Rum Cookies (12 Days of Christmas 2010)

I love to make a variety of cookies each year for the holidays. It’s probably no real surprise that my favorites are the ones that I get to decorate. It’s just not Christmas unless I do some cookie decorating!

I am a fan of the standard sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, and I make them every year (including this year). But, last week I decided to spruce up my sugar cookie recipe a bit with some fun holiday flavors. I was thinking about eggnog, which naturally led to thinking about rum, which, of course, meant that I had to add some butter rum flavor to the cookies I was already in the process of mixing up. While I was at it, I threw in some spices, too.

Friday Favorites – Christmas Entertaining (Episode 75)

If you’re much like me, you’ve probably rushed around to finish all of your shopping and get the gifts wrapped so that you have next week to focus on food. Granted, I do make a lot of homemade gifts, so I don’t have ALL of my gifts done. But, I would much rather spend the week before Christmas in my kitchen listening to Christmas music while I cook and bake. It sure beats pushing your way through the super-crowded stores looking for last minute gifts! I suppose that it’s also a good time to clean the house if you have guests coming, but we won’t talk much about that.

Since I spent last week introducing you to more cookies than you could ever possibly bake during one holiday season (that’s a challenge… I dare you!), I thought it would good to focus this week’s Friday Favorites post on holiday entertaning! After all, we can’t live on cookies alone (or can we?).

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