Countdown to Christmas!

We took the Girl Scouts to a nice restaurant the other night for their holiday party. Everyone dressed up and we had a wonderful dinner.

The restaurant is fancy and the girls didn't know what most of the food on the menu was. They were forced to go out of their comfort level to try something new.

They each ended up with a dinner that was so good, and I was very proud of them for how well they handled it.

I spent the day today making cookies, raspberry oatmeal bars and fudge to take as gifts on Christmas day. Bailey helped me with the Christmas cookies. We had a great time.

She got her hair cut on Tuesday - isn't she adorable?


Here's some of the cookies we made. I got the recipe from the December, 2009 issue of Good Housekeeping. I used their icing recipe as well.



It made a ton of cookies, so that was quite nice.



Ok, so you know how I like to look for short cuts in the kitchen, right? I learned a good one today. The recipe suggested that you divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, flatten each into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate. Well, this wrapping in plastic worked so well that I didn't have to actually roll out any dough. I was able to "roll" out the dough using my hands and the plastic wrap. It worked great!

The recipe also suggested that you refrigerate the dough overnight. Oops, should have read that the day before then, huh? I didn't do that, but they came out just great anyway.

Tomorrow I'm making brownie bites, chocolate chip cookies and maybe some lemon cookies. We'll see how much I actually get done.

Happy holidays to everyone!