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At Christmastime, I bake cookie ornaments.
It’s what I do. It’s who I am. It’s what makes Christmas for me. I decorate them.
Children decorate them.
I love the orange slices, the twig stars, the popcorn garlands, all the homemade and handmade gifts.
But no matter how much I love all the rest of what rounds out Christmas, it’s all about the cookie ornaments for me. Sometimes readers ask me why I don’t make the kind of dough ornaments that last from year to year. I like to bake cookies for the tree every year. It puts me in the holiday spirit and it reminds me of what is important–to be in the moment, here, now, smell it, taste it, feel it. It’s simple, creative, nearly free, and made with my own hands. It puts my mind in the right place. I have to make the cookie ornaments new each year. It’s my ritual, my tradition, my intentional Christmas. It’s not my only way of marking the season, but it’s the one that somehow means the most to me, that seems to sum up all the rest in one.
It makes my Christmas. (After Christmas, the cookie ornaments serve as goat treats until they run out.)
What makes Christmas for you? And you can’t say family/loved ones/PEOPLE OF ANY KIND because we all know that comes first–I want to know what comes right after that? What do you do, have to do every year? What is your intentional Christmas?
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"It was a cold wintry day when I brought my children to live in rural West Virginia. The farmhouse was one hundred years old, there was already snow on the ground, and the heat was sparse-—as was the insulation. The floors weren’t even, either. My then-twelve-year-old son walked in the door and said, “You’ve brought us to this slanted little house to die." Keep reading our story....
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BTW, my granddaughter who is 8 and I made the Cast Iron Pan Candy today…..man, it is too good. We drizzled white chocolate over it. To die for!
One of my favorite things, is the Christmas cards. I love hearing from friends and relatives.
In our entry way, I take ribbon that has the wire in the edges and with thumb tacks, arrange the ribbon in the shape of a Christmas tree. We start about three feet up from the floor and the tree itself, is about 4 feet high. The area inside the tree we cover with pictures of family and friends, some are old of people who have passed away, some are new….some are friends, some are pets, just whatever strikes our fancy. Then on both sides of the “tree” we hang the Christmas cards we receive. Everyone has to stop and look…find their own picture, or the one when they were a baby. It is fun, it connects us with the generation before us, and it is the Christmas decoration I love the most.
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Baked Turkey with stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, cranberry sauce, black and green olives, pumpkin, chocolate pecan and Hershey Bar Pies. Sometimes I also make fresh rolls to go with it.
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So thank you
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I also have to make squash/pumpkin pies.
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I also enjoy all the Christmas cards. I send out over 90 cards to relatives, high school friends, college friends and to people that I have worked with that have now moved away.
But what comes to mind first is our Lefse. We have the big griddle, the special rolling pin and our family recipe.
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Shelley
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Love your blog!!!!
Susan at Charm of the Carolines
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My intentional Christmas is much like your Suzanne–it is about the cookies and the baking and the candy making.
I love the feeling you get this time of year, I love the music–I love it all.
I put up 5 trees every year, and the first one we light on Thanksgiving night. Gifts are not really a part of our Christmas, it is have the once a year fun things, the special things we do for our family, and ourself.It is the decorating and the smells.
I am starting my canding making and baking this week, I have a big wicker basket will all my baking ingriedients ready to go. The cookie cutterS are out and the baking sheets are ready.
I love getting up very early when it is still dark and turning on the trees and the fireplace and having my coffee–it is so beautiful and peaceful.
Life at that moment is perfect!
I AM READY!! COME ON CHRISTMAS, BRING IT ON!!
JO
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I give all my neighbors fresh baked bread, pound cakes and cookies.
I love the idea of your cookies on the tree. Amazingly we never did that growing up! But I have Mama’s glass blown bulbs with nativity scenes in them. They are beautiful and I carefully wrap each one in bubble wrap and cloth each year after taking the tree down.
Deb
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Today we go to my daughters tree trimming and next week I have one. She’s carried on the tradition that I started many, many years ago when we had an ucle with no where to go. It’s grown over the years. Neither of us have very big places (hers is a small apt.) so we stagger some of the people but we love taking out the ornamets one by one with so many memories (she has 25 years worth
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Merry Christmas all!
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Those are a few things we do each year.
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Oh today was the first day that Broken Kid has been to school in a month. Want to know what I did on my first day alone? I have spent the last two and a half hours playing around on your website!
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Merry Christmas
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