Christmas and Lessons in Baking: Nutella Christmas Tree and Sugar Cookies

We had a really fun Christmas this year because we knew Sophie wouldn't "get" it yet, and she didn't, so we were very happy with our decision to not go hard on presents for her and instead wrapped some of her favorite things, like vegetable pouches from Costco and Goldfish crackers. And she was delighted! It was fun to have her be a little more interactive on Christmas morning though.

We had family over on Christmas Day to decorate sugar cookies and boy did we decorate sugar cookies. I still can't look at the small stash that I still have3 because I ate way too many of them on the day.

Christmas morning Sophie

New Cocomelon blanket!

One of my crown jewels

My other crown jewel

I had also decided to try this Nutella pull-about Christmas tree. It wasn't until after I made the dough (challah) that I realize - wtf was I doing? I should have made a pastry sheet. I was in a bit of a bad mood after that because I knew that it wouldn't turn out the way it was supposed to. I expected it to be a total disaster but instead it was just a minor one. I'm probably lucky because the taste of Nutella covers a multitude of errors!

I'll try again someday with the right kind of dough and try to critique it then.

This week has been a bit of a struggle since AJ is working, I'm off and Sophie's daycare is closed, so a lot of trying to find things to do during the day, which is challenging in the winter when not only is it colder, but it's been raining?? What?? We don't know how to operate in the rain out here! We did have a day at the zoo, which was great cause we hadn't been there in awhile and she really seemed more attentive to it and what was going on, and then my mom and Jim got us in to Knott's with them and that was fun (especially after AJ showed up and could help with Sophie, especially in the lines ughhhh) but she had a great time!

The ultimate hit was the carousel - she was wary of it until she saw the giraffe and then that was all she could talk about. She had to have the giraffe, and she had to keep riding it. She went on it 3 times I think, once with AJ, once with me and once with my mom, and she also got the hang of waving as she passed by us which was the most darling part ever!

 

 

 

It's New Year's Eve today which is a bit secondary for us, because we have the somewhat misfortune of having a very close friend (and one of Sophie's 2 godmothers) having a birthday on December 30, which means that we tend to go hard on December 30 and then we feel like December 31 is actually New Year's Day because we're so dead. It's not so bad today, but we'll probably have (yet another) lowkey New Year's Eve.

Happy New Year's!