Thinking about making Xmas cookies, looking at chocolate chip, three trays of sugar cookies and gingerbread (not cookies just cake).

For the sugar cookies I’m thinking on getting cookie cutters and doing cute cut outs and decorating them traditionally or I might go the extra route and make the icing and sprinkles all gold, there are a lot of great colored icing sprays.

Icy cold weather and snow remind me of my childhood. This only happens when I’m in my house and open my windows to let the icy chill in, I don’t know if snow has a special scent or something but it only works when there is snow on the ground. When there isn’t snow it reminds me of the falls of like 2010/2011 which were awesome.

I try really hard to get into the fall/ Christmas spirit. For fall all I have to do is enjoy the fall air and get an apple cider spice snow sort of candle. Though fall is pretty easy Xmas is a bit harder, for Xmas I try to recapture the holiday warm homey feeling I felt a lot in high school. I start listening to Xmas songs early, get into Black Friday, another way to get the feeling started is to read the Christmas bits of the Harry Potter books or watch Christmas vacation.

It’s my first year where I’m not in the house I basically grew up in. I have my own place where I am in charge of the holidays. My parents got divorced and my mom had to estrange herself from her side of the family, sisters and brother and mom etc and my dad isn’t a very take charge of events sort of person and my brother isn’t quite at that adulting level yet. I planned thanksgiving and it actually went really well, I ordered the food through Walmart curbside pick up a few days before thanksgiving and my dad picked it up and kept it really chill. Everyone seemed decently cool with it. It was just me my brother and parents, yes my recently divorced parents, they are weird honestly. We all lived together until two years ago and they haven’t been together for 24 years, it’s better that they don’t live together now haha. We all still hang out through.

For Xmas: my brother and dad go to his mothers house on Xmas eve and they do the traditional 7 fish Italian dinner deal. So that night my moms coming over and we will all wear matching pajamas and I’m thinking about making hot cocoa or something and we might watch Xmas vacation. The only Xmas movie really worth watching thousands of times.

Then everyone is supposed to sleep over though I’m not sure if my brother will… but my parents are then we are going to wake up in the morning and open presents. I already bought everyone’s presents and I have begun wrapping them, I really got too many things but it’s the first year I’ve had my own money to work with so I really went crazy, I’m normally not that person but doing it one year won’t hurt.

I haven’t planned any food things for Xmas yet but I assume it’s going to be ham or chicken and honestly I bought so much extra stuffing I’m going to make that because it’s amazing. I guess to pair with the meat, mashed potatoes and fresh cranberry sauce like thanksgiving, my mom volunteers at a farm in the weekends so we get all of vegetables and fruit she planted straight from the ground. I mean what could be more wholesome than that? The farmer has health issues so she pretty much takes over every day after work in the spring and summer and fall. She plants, grows, harvests, sells and cans.

I on the other hand bought stuffing that’s in a box… so we even out.

I try to have a gingerbread house making contest with some of my friends and I can’t decide if I should do it this year, I’m fifty fifty on it right now.