Gingerbread Birdhouse

Merry Christmas, dear readers!  We present to you our own gingerbread birdhouse, completed just in time for Christmas day.  The design was inspired by a wee birdie, a lovely little lovebird, who recently adopted us.  In a very short time he has totally charmed all of us with his lively personality and cheeky attitude.   Yeah, he's the boss, pretty much.

The other point of our inspiration was, quite naturally, the cuckoo clock!

Five Spice Spritz Cookies

Christmas is just around the corner, so fast, amirite?!  And we're buzzing around, making secret gift plans, decorating the house and, of course, making our Christmas cookies.  

This year we made cookie press cookies, also known as spritz cookies.  A couple years ago I tried making these cookie press cookies for the 1st time and it was a big ol mess: cookie dough not sticking, not pressing out right, just about everything going wrong... 🥹  So I gave up.

I thought to try it again.  But this time we added our own twist to these Christmas Spritz Cookies, a touch of five spice powder to add an exotic flavor to these yummilicious crisp buttery cookies.  We also worked out how to successfully get those darn cookies out and onto the cookie sheet!

Snowball Melting Moments Cookies

Yeah, it's that time of the year!  The countdown to Christmas is here!  I love the Xmas season despite all the rampant commercialization of it these days.  There's always been something really wonderful, warm and fuzzy to me about it all.  And now that we've got a little girl it's even more fun to celebrate Christmas, there are gifts to hide, decorations to put up, christmas carols to sing!  

We kicked off the season this year by making these yummiliciously fun Snowball Melting Moments Cookies; a cookie easy enough for my little girl to make, mostly, by herself and good looking enough to give away as a gift.  I mean who wouldn't want to make and eat cookies that look, taste (in my imagination, at least), and melt deliciously in the mouth just like real snowballs!

Christmas Sugar Cookies

This year for Christmas we made our first real sugar cookies, my daughter and I.  These Christmas Sugar Cookies were not perfect looking by any means, but looked adorable and tasted really great (not too sweet, just right!).  And most importantly, my little girl had a blast "helping mommy" with the all important task of painting the cookies.   These christmas sugar cookies are a great food project to do with kids because, as I discovered, they will look great no matter how they are painted!