The countdown is on.
I cannot believe Christmas is just days away.
I am ready,
but not ready for it to all be over with.
We have been busy here at the Odom house and that means
we have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen.
Here are some of the things we have been doing:
We have been working on a "faux" gingerbread house.
I used to make my gingerbread house from scratch, but last year I found this at a craft show....
It is a reusable form that looks like gingerbread.
It is not the same as the real thing, it is definitely missing the smell, but boy what a time saver it is.
It takes the hard work away and leaves you with just all of the fun!!
We made several batches of royal icing..... the glue,
and as always we used my granny's sifter.
We used ginger cookies as the roof....
...crushed peppermints on the chimney...
and other candy as decorations.
We left some things for the older girls to do...
Brittany worked on it the other night...
Finally finished!
Barrett is a teacher's assistant for a second grade class and we spent an evening
working on bags of hot chocolate mix with marshmallows...
and spiced tea for the teacher.
We spent an afternoon at the mall and then went out to eat
to Mia Francesca's.
And because we can't go out to eat ALL of the time,
we have been doing a lot of cooking here at home.
BF1 and Lola did some bonding...
while the cooking and grilling was done.
We love our onion goggles because we all have super sensitive eyes!
We make a lot caramel corn during the holidays.
We give it out to neighbors and friends.
It is a tedious...
and long process.
You have to stir it every ten minutes for an hour.
Barrett had a few friends over for a cookie exchange.
She made a shortbread cookie with cherries and dark chocolate...
drizzled with white chocolate!
We served a few things.
I discovered a new cute way to serve meatballs.
I have several of these long skinny dishes and we just spooned a little sauce on the bottom and set the meatballs on top and added toothpicks.
Our gingerbread house was the center piece of the cookie table.
Art wanted to go shopping with the girls tonight.....
I am guessing for me!
I was very tired and really didn't feel like it, but I tagged along with them.
I had to stay away from them and so
I just wandered around and enjoyed people watching and bargain hunting.
I bought a pair of stretchy pants!
Ha!
A sure sign of all of the time I have spent in the kitchen!
I am already dreading January.
They called me when they were finished and told me where to meet them.
This is them waiting for me......
So,
I can't leave Charlie out of this long post.
He had visions of sugarplums dancing in his head this afternoon.
And Bubbles???
He has been channeling his inner Rudolph!
