cookies

Things I want to remember

Giving a devotional on the book of Esther at my church. I loved it! I’m so glad my mom could come, too. She had to do some unexpected traveling that day for a family emergency, but made sure she saw me speak first. Thanks, mom! If anyone wants me to post about the actual devotional, I would love to.

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How hard working and talented my husband is. Kitchen renovations have been happening in the Zottola household!

Renovations

How wonderfully challenging it is to write and edit a book.

Book

How much I adore animals. Everything about them makes me so happy. I would love to have another dog. And a cat or two. I just need to convince Jimmy ;).

Pet sitting

How lovely freshly baked bread and cookies smell and taste.

Baking

That I can’t trust Lola as much as I’d like to. The little miss has been quite the escape artist lately! I was mowing the lawn on Saturday and she snuck out our back door (while Jimmy was working on our kitchen renovations) and blew past me. I ran after her and thankfully caught her. Jimmy carried her home and she looked so guilty. It was actually really cute, haha. It’s comforting to know she still has lots of spunk, even though she’s almost 10-years-old.

Lola

And just for fun, one thing I’d like to forget is the feeling of accidentally dropping our oven on my foot while Jimmy and I were moving it. I thought about posting a picture buuuuut I don’t think anyone really wants to see it ;).

What is one thing you want to remember?

What is one thing you want to forget?

A new tradition

Hi! Can you believe it’s almost Christmas? I’m very excited to spend time with mine and Jimmy’s families. This time of year–when we remember and celebrate Christ’s birth–is incredibly special. The traditions and festivities are always so memorable, too. Over the weekend, my mom and I decided to start a new tradition. We got together and spent the day baking cookies and treats, and assembled the baked goods on trays to give to our neighbors.

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I think that we spent about eight hours baking. I’m sure four of those hours were probably spent laughing. I don’t know what it was, but we had a major case of the giggles all day. It could have been because my hand twitched when I was holding candy eyeballs?

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Then I said something (I can’t remember what) and it made my mom laugh so hard that she drooled on a cookie…which we promptly threw away. We also burned a batch of gingersnaps and couldn’t figure out why. It turned out that we accidentally used wax paper to line the cookie sheet instead of parchment. Yikes!

My sister and her boyfriend were at my parent’s house for a little while on Saturday, and they wanted me to take pictures of them by the Christmas tree. Hannah’s boyfriend was helping her get ready and I walked by the bathroom and saw him blow drying her hair. It was such a sweet moment!

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It was also nice to hang out with my parent’s dogs, Brandy and Reggie. When I talk to Jimmy about them I sometimes refer to them as one unit and call them “Breggie” haha.

My mom and I ended up making sugar cookies, gingersnaps, Russian tea cakes (also called snowballs or Mexican wedding cookies), peanut butter blossoms, penguin cookies, chocolate crinkles, cranberry bars, and peppermint bark. We both agreed that either the cranberry bars or the penguins were the hardest thing to make because they required so many different steps and ingredients. The easiest cookies were probably the Russian tea cakes. The treat that was the biggest hit was the peppermint bark.

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Jimmy and I delivered cookie trays to seven of our neighbors on Sunday afternoon, and I don’t think I stopped smiling for the rest of the day. We both agreed that it felt amazing and like it was the least we could do to give back to the people who have been so friendly and welcoming to us since we moved to our community in 2014.

Do you bake around Christmas time?
What’s your favorite type of cookie?