Author: Allie Zottola

Christmas Cookie Baking Day

My mom and I had our second annual Christmas cookie baking day on Saturday. It was wonderful and included laughter, a melted plastic spoon, Christmas music, and lots of cookies.

baking-daycookie-shopping-list

What we made

Russian Tea Cakes
Chocolate Covered Oreos
Ritz Toffee
Polar Bear Cookies
Chocolate Crinkles
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Sugar Cookies
Chocolate Snowballs
Peppermint Bark
Chocolate Covered Pretzels

We baked at my house this year because I had to run out to pet sit in the area a few times. While my kitchen is much smaller than my parents’, we made the best of the counter space and piled cookies wherever we could.

cookiespeanut-butter-blossoms

We melted chocolate, rolled balls of dough, unwrapped countless Hershey’s Kisses, got sick of hearing the oven’s timer beep, and taste tested all day long.

For some reason, my mom left that night absolutely covered in flour and powdered sugar and I was left unscathed. We’re still trying to figure that out, haha.

melting-chocolate polar-bear-cookies toffee

We baked for eight hours and were exhausted by the end of the day. That delirious, happy-type of exhaustion, though! It was worth every minute of work to be able to give our neighbors, friends, and loved ones tins of cookies the next day.

It was also worth it to eat copious amounts of cookies 😉

cookie-tin

Do you bake around Christmas time?

What’s your favorite type of cookie?

Day Date

Jimmy and I both took Friday off of work and spent the day together. It was a special little day date and I loved every second of it!

We woke up sometime after 6 am and had a nice, slow morning. We drank coffee, ate breakfast, I read my Bible and journaled, and Jimmy played video games. I also prepped some things for a special dinner I had planned for us.

Well, I tried to write in my journal...

Well, I tried to write in my journal…

video-games-with-malcolm

Around noon, we headed out for lunch. We had a gift card to Red Lobster, so we enjoyed some delicious rainbow trout and steak.

red-lobster

After polishing off lunch, we decided to try and finish up some Christmas shopping.

We wandered around a few stores, including HomeGoods, where Jimmy found this… platter? Decoration? Whatever it was, he was fascinated by it and wanted me to take a picture of him holding it.

jimmy

We browsed around a toy store that had trains (Jimmy’s favorite!) and went to a pet store with plenty of puppies (my favorite!). Jimmy even indulged me and let me hold a Bernese Mountain Dog. Berners are one of my most favorite dog breeds 🙂

bernese-mountain-dog

Those paws!

After we had our fill of trains and puppies, we were cold (the average temperature for the day was 12°F) and hungry, so we headed home and had a pizza party!

I had started the dough early in the morning and we each made our own personal pizza–mine topped with tomatoes and onions and Jimmy’s with pepperoni–and then I started a pet sitting job that lasted until Sunday.

pet-sitting

We ended the evening watching Gold Rush and snuggling. It was a wonderful day together, and reminded me of how important (and enjoyable) it is to date my husband!