Now It's Crunch Time

Yesterday was my day off. And. It was a flurry of activity around here. Last minute sewing and baking. Enough to finish off the three potted trees (seen above and mentioned in this post and this post) and three plates of holiday goodies to go with. Oh yeah, and deliver.

At some point in the day, there was the realization that I might have bitten more than I could chew. Why, oh WHY, hadn't I began gift making back in January like I ALWAYS say I'm going to (check out #8 on this post). But. I hadn't and so there's no point stressing about it now.

I started out the morning with the realization that I didn't have any sweetened condensed milk (that I KNEW I had) for the fudge I was going to make. I was not going to make a trip into town for it either, as I remembered seeing a recipe to make it in one of my cookbooks. Somewhere. It would have been faster to run to town (and that's at LEAST an hour round trip)!

Once I got the whole sweetened condensed milk thing out of the way, it went pretty well. Fudge. Done. Cookies. Baked and decorated. Which, I have learned, do not have to be anything fancy. Well, they could be fancy, if I had "thyme" to make them that way. But. Obviously, not yesterday. I just took a sugar cookie dough recipe (and apparently not the one I usually use as they mounded up more than in the past.....I really need to write this stuff down somewhere) and dropped the dough by teaspoonfuls onto the baking sheets instead of the whole rolling/cutting out scenario. When they came off the cookie sheet, the first batch I spread with a teaspoon of jam and topped with shredded coconut while they were still warm.

 Pretty good for speedy cookies, don't you think?

The next few batches I let cool completely before I frosted them with "canned" frosting and sprinkles.

Some of them have crushed up candy canes in place of the sprinkles. They're pretty enough to eat.

After I got the baking out of the way, I quickly finished up a few more Stocking Ornaments. Made some quick bags to cover the tree's pot. Decorated the little trees. Plated up goodies. Then hubby and I made the neighborhood rounds dropping off gifts. Whew! I'm exhausted just thinking about it! I have one more day off this week and since I still have 3 more trees to decorate and more goodies to make......it's going to be another busy one. I'll probably be glad when Thursday gets here and I can go back to work!

Happy Christmas!

Lori