Tis the Season

At the end of November I had these grandiose plans to watch a Christmas movie every night until Christmas with my husband. Of course then my husband had to go to Texas for work the first week of December so that didn’t work out so well. The following week seemed to fly by as we were preparing to go back to Texas for a company Christmas party. Now all of a sudden we are in the third week of December, Christmas is 8 days away and we have yet to watch a single Christmas movie. To be quite honest, I’m lucky we even got our tree up and some decorations. With all of his traveling early on, my husband didn’t even want to put up decorations in the first place. It wasn’t until I had a good friend offer to come over and help me put up the tree did my husband change his tune. (Thanks Z!)

Even with Christmas music playing around the clock, stockings hung on the chimney with care, and presents under the tree – I felt like I still hadn’t fully gotten into the Christmas spirit. I remember growing up, ever since I can remember, my mom spending an entire weekend baking TONS and TONS of homemade Christmas cookies from scratch and then sending me off to deliver them to all of the surrounding neighbors. I found this very embarrassing as a child but now I think it would be rather fun to catch up with some old neighbors. She would make baklava, pizzelle cookies, chocolate covered peanut butter balls, Christmas shaped sugar cookies with holiday sprinkles, kiffles, macaroons, Madeline cookies, and jam thumbprint cookies. Yeah, my mom was a cookie rock star.

I love to bake, but I’m not very patient and I don’t like cleaning up big messes. So if it involves rolling out dough, rolling dough in sugar or sprinkles, or dipping things in chocolate and setting them out on wax paper to dry you can probably count me out. In fact – in my 6 1/2 years of marriage I’ve only “baked” Christmas cookies once and I think that was our first year together. And I didn’t actually make anything from scratch. I went to the local grocery store, bought every kind of cut and bake cookie available, baked them, and handed them out in pretty tins. So I guess that doesn’t really count. Since then, I’ve just handed out Christmas cards to my neighbors and I make my husband stick them in the mailboxes.

This year I wanted to be different. I wanted to get as Christmas-y as I possibly could in the midst of all of our hustle and bustle with our new house, getting settled, working, and every day life. So tonight, for the first time in my married life, I made Christmas cookies. Actually, I just made cookies but I will call them Christmas cookies because they are for Christmas. I decided to keep my list of cookies short since: 1. I can’t eat the cookies myself due to being gluten and lactose intolerant. 2. My husband doesn’t really eat sweets so the leftovers would probably go bad before they were eaten. 3. I don’t have that many new neighbors to hand out cookies to.

So on my list to make were Blondies (which is like a blonde brownie, I guess), chocolate chip cookies, Heath cookies, and mint chocolate cookies. I figure you can’t go wrong with the basics and everyone likes the standard “go to” cookies. I mean, who doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies? And the mint chocolate cookies were Christmas-y, sort of. I decorated the festive holiday plates (courtesy of the dollar store) with Hershey Kisses to give it that extra holiday effect and slapped a Christmas card on top to solidify the fact that these were indeed Christmas cookies. I even hand delivered them to my neighbor myself. Mom, aren’t you proud of me? (I’m still debating about the other neighbor. I don’t have their contact info, I don’t know if they are home, and it’s not safe to leave food on the doorstep when you live on a wooded lot.)

Anyway – 129 cookies, 4 cookie plates, 1 special plate for the hubby, and 1 huge ziplock full of leftover cookies, I can officially say I’ve made homemade Christmas cookies. Tis the Season!

My Christmas Cookies!

About Food4Thought

I am no fitness expert. I am simply someone who has found joy in fitness and nutrition. I am a certified group fitness instructor. I’ve been teaching at the local health club for about 3 years now. While Zumba was my first love, I have since added Total Conditioning, Bodyworks plus Abs, and Core to my repertoire of classes. I work with a personal trainer to help me reach my fitness goals that I cannot obtain through group fitness alone. This year I ran my first 5K and plan to run my first 10K in March. To further my knowledge in the fitness realm, I have begun reading Strong Women Stay Slim, New Rules for Lifting Abs, and The Body Sculpting Bible for Women. On my list to read next is Wheat Belly. I am always looking for new ways to further my education and knowledge to better serve the members that take my group fitness classes. Lately, I have started tinkering with recipes, buying healthy cookbooks, and finding easy, tasty, and healthy foods to make. Like I mentioned earlier, I am by no means an expert, but the things I share with you have helped me tremendously with my fitness journey. It is my hope that with these easy tips and recipes, that you too can make these tiny steps and see big positive changes in your life.

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