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Tag: holidays

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!

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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.

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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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Freezing Cookie Dough (WFMW) and a Giveaway!

Since the holiday baking season is officially in full swing, I thought I’d share a holiday baking tip with you this Wednesday!

With Christmas over a week away, it’s still a bit early for me to start doing all of my holiday cookie baking. I don’t want my cookies to taste stales when my friends and family bite into them. But, I also want to get a head start on my baking. I bake a lot of cookies for Christmas, so I don’t have time to do everything in the last few days.

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Cranberry Pomegranate Brussels with Gorgonzola (Share Our Holiday Table)

I enjoy the way everyone comes about the holidays from a different perspective. We each have our favorite recipes, family get togethers, and other special traditions that make the holidays special. The one thing that almost everyone can agree on, though, is giving. Whether you choose names for a Secret Santa exchange, spend weeks at the mall shopping for a perfect gift for everyone on your list, or spend the week baking homemade goodies, my guess is that giving is a big part of your holiday celebration.

I have always enjoyed exchanging Christmas gifts. I love searching for the perfect gift for the loved ones on my list, and I do lots of baking to prepare cookies and other homemade gifts for my friends and family. I enjoy the hustle and the bustle and love the long days working iin my kitchen and assembling and wrapping gifts. Lately, however, I find that I have less and less enthusiasm about spending a lot of time at the mall. I feel like many of the people on my list really don’t need anything. It’s fun to pick out small gifts that they will enjoy, but I can’t get excited about spending money on extravagant gifts just for the sake of saying we spent money. Can you relate?

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