I Am My Mother's Daughter

As the baby of the family, I like to pretend that I'm my mother's favorite child. Sure, I've got some worthy contenders in the form of my siblings [especially my sisters for having the first grandbabies], but if nothing else, I am most certainly my mother's daughter in a way that my sisters are not.

Christmas has always been one of my favorite times of year because my mother is a woman who likes to decorate, who likes to bake, and who likes to celebrate the holidays in style. Most of my Christmas memories involve helping my mother bake Christmas goodies, hang ornaments on the tree, or lug tubs and tubs of Christmas decorations into the house from our shed in order to transform our home into a Christmas wonderland.

In honor of being my mother's daughter, and the fact that I'm spending my first Christmas not in her home, I'm here to share my holiday baked goods and sparse decorations with you.

I spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday baking five different types of cookies and two types of fudge and packaging them up in little Christmas tins and then hiding the results from the crafty ants. I went through nearly three pounds of butter, a bag of walnuts, half a gigantic bag of chocolate chips, four pounds of powdered sugar, three pounds of flour and sugar, and a dozen eggs. The results? Totally worth it. Though the waistband of my favorite pair of jeans has started to complain.

To me, Christmas is just not Christmas without sugar cookies. We always made sugar cookies for Santa Claus' plate.

This recipe is one of my favorites because the cookies bake up fat and moist.

Next up was fudge, another holiday staple in our home. I generally use the fudge recipe on the back of the jet-puffed marshmallow creme to pretty consistent and delicious results [although this batch did not firm up as much as I would have liked]. This batch was just plain chocolate fudge.

And this batch included chopped walnuts and toffee chips.

Another popular cookie in our home is the angel thumbprint, rolled in nuts (walnuts again) and filled with jam or jelly (strawberry and boysenberry in this case). The jelly centers always fool me into thinking that these cookies are not as bad for me as other cookies.

I also attempted to make "magic bars," which has a graham cracker crust, condensed milk, chocolate chips and coconut. It was a first time for me and it didn't turn out as I remembered it. Still tastes good though.

And then, of course, I baked my pumpkin cookies. Here they are waiting to be slathered with maple frosting. Have I mentioned recently how much I've come to love and adore maple frosting? Because I really, really do.

I'm keeping all the leftover pumpkin cookies for myself. They're that good.


I also baked some peanut butter cookies. Normally I roll them into balls and then stick a Hersey's kiss in the center. This year, however, I took mini Snickers and rolled the dough around it so that when they baked, the chocolate and caramel and peanuts inside the Snickers all melted and oozed into a delicious center surprise.

I'm sending most of the leftovers with David to work on Christmas Eve, which is good because I've got a ton of fudge left. The other cookies may not survive until then.

On the decoration side of things, I've been having a hard time finding just the right kind of decorations that I like. Then again, my mother has been collecting her warehouse of decorations over the past thirty years so I guess I can exercise a little patience. I've already shared our tale of two Christmas trees, so I'll move on to other decorations.

Our stockings, which are not hung by the fire with care. We don't have a fireplace. That would be a waste of space in Hawaii.

Our Hallmark dancing snowmen, sent to me by my mother during previous Christmases. I went to Hallmark to get this year's version and they were all sold out! I was very sad.

My small Fontinini nativity set. It seemed only appropriate that our shelf of foreign scriptures be the backdrop for this scene.

And finally, let's not forget our bathroom wreath which I hung there mostly because there was a random, unused nail there. Also, cinnamon scented pine cones. It's about as close as I'm going to get to getting that pine fresh Christmas smell.

I think my efforts would make my mother proud. If she could eat my fabulous baked goods, I'm sure she'd declare me her favorite child.

Seriously, maple frosting is that good.

And if I don't get a chance to blog before Thursday, have a safe and merry Christmas!