Christmas Notebook

During the past few weeks, I have almost finished all the cookies and candies that I can make ahead of time, to be stored in the freezer until the Open House in December. I think I have two more things to make. And then I might add a couple of new things…

Sour Cream Sugar Cookies

Packaged and ready for the freezer.

Cranberry Orange Cookies … These are simple to make, but delicious! Big on flavor! One of my favorite Christmas Cookies.

A new treat this year…Pecan Pie Truffles. I made the centers and will dip them in chocolate and garnish them with toasted, chopped pecans before the Open House.

Peppermint Meltaways … These tender cookies require careful handling, but are really worth the extra trouble. After being thawed, they will be frosted with pink frosting and garnished with crushed peppermints.

The garland and lights are up over the kitchen windows. As you can see, a string was not working, but DH fixed it. He has also put up over-the-door garlands, the outdoor porch garlands, and the front hall garlands. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The chalkboard tree is coming along! Each additional feature that Genny chalks on makes it that much better! She should be able to finish it this weekend. It is almost complete! Then we move on to putting up and decorating other trees.

As it stood a week ago.

As DH walked by the chalkboard one day, he couldn’t resist adding something for the father in the picture to juggle…but that won’t be the final story for that panel. I should be able to show the finished picture next week.

Last weekend’s update to the tree is as follows.

Note that the children are opening door number two on their countdown to Christmas box. Our open house is scheduled for the second of December. Genny thinks of little details like that to make the picture better!

When I printed this coloring page, the smaller girl was holding scissors. Genny took them out. Don’t you think she looks entirely too young to be packing large, sharp scissors!?

Meanwhile, I’ve also been working on ornaments for an exchange.

Stay tuned for more updates!  ~~Rhonda

Genny arrived Saturday morning and we started on our Christmas preparations. I began by mixing together ingredients for two kinds of truffles. Almond Truffles and Raspberry Truffles. Both are easy to make.

Later in the day, after the chocolate had hardened a bit, I used a small cookie scoop to portion out the centers. Then I rolled them and left them on cookie sheets to harden again before placing them in the freezer. The day before the open house, I will dip them in white almond bark. The raspberry-flavored ones will get coarse red sugar sprinkled on top and the almond-flavored ones with be garnished with finely chopped toasted almonds.

I helped Genny with the chalkboard Christmas tree for a little while. There will be a large lamp post on the side of the chalkboard tree, and I needed to make a pattern for Genny to trace for the lamp. I also had a coloring page that I had printed from online, that had to be simplified for Genny to transfer to the chalkboard. While I was doing all the above, Genny was working on the chalkboard tree.

She likes to start at the top of the eight-foot tree to minimize smearing the chalk as she works. This is the beginning. Thirteen more panels to go!

We took a break from the chalkboard tree to work on the “Blue and Silver Tree” in the downstairs bedroom. The room is done in blue and yellow. The tree is decorated with vintage-style ornments in blue and silver. And finished with a sprinkle of silver tinsel.

My handy Christmas elf (DH) brought the tree down from the attic Friday evening and set it up for us. He made sure all the lights were working. The silver bead garlands are attached to the tree so they stay on while the tree is stored. That saves us a lot of time each year. To attach them, I bend the end of a stem under and over the bead string where I want it to hang. I squeeze it together and they stay on, even while the tree is hauled from the attic, down two flights of stairs, and down the hall into the bedroom. The beads usually need a little tweaking as they may be tangled around another branch here or there, but, for the most part, they are ready to go when the tree is placed in the tree stand. The lights stay on the tree, as well, of course. I used cool-white LED lights on this tree and they are perfect for the blue room.

The other interesting thing about this tree is that I spray-painted it silver. Yes. I spray-painted a brand-new tree when we got it in 2012. Here’s a blog post about the first tree I spray-painted in 2008 with some updates through the years. As the post points out, I didn’t use glitter on the second incarnation of the spray-painted tree. You can read about it here:  thanks, hgtv

I should have taken more photos as we went along, but I forgot. Here’s a video of the completed tree.

Then back to the chalkboard tree. Genny wasn’t satisfied with the picture she had chalked in the left panel below. You can see it in the chalkboard tree picture at the beginning of this post. It was too finely detailed to be at the top of the tree where it is harder to see than the lower panels. We decided to use the same picture, but we enlarged the picture using the printer/copier and will use the main part of that picture for the left panel. Maybe you’ll see that next week!

She moved on to the next panel, the children’s Christmas program. We’re going to have a little angel dangling to the right of the manger, among the stars.

This panel celebrates the annual Christmas Eve church service.

And below the church panel is Grandma baking Christmas cookies. Genny gave Grandma blue curtains with snowflakes to mimic my own kitchen’s Christmas curtains.

As you can see, we have a ways to go! Of the twenty-plus trees we put up, this one takes the longest to “decorate.”

While Genny worked on the chalkboard tree, I made a double batch of Butterscotch Gingerbread Cookies. I am storing the dough in the fridge until Wednesday, when I will bake them. I also made Double Chocolate Biscotti, which has mini chocolate chips and chipped white chocolate in the dough. I baked those, stored them in a gladware container and put them in the freezer. Before the open house, I will thaw them and dip one end in white chocolate.

The other project I finished today was to make ribbon tree toppers for the glass tree. I looped ribbon and tied it to the end of wooden skewers I had painted black. I enjoyed the fireplace and Christmas music on my computer while I worked.

I added some hot glue to hold the ribbons in place. On Wednesday, DH plans to climb the ladder to place these at the top of the glass tree.

Also on Wednesday, I plan to make more cookies for the freezer. Genny will be here on the weekend, as well as our older son and his family to help with more Christmas prep. It should be fun! Stay tuned and join us as we watch Christmas come together!

~~Rhonda