Baking & Making

This is my very favorite day of the holiday season. The girls' last day of school was yesterday and, while a Saturday, it is nevertheless, the first day of Christmas vacation. The girls are blissfully sleeping in. I love the anticipation of two glorious weeks of late night movie watching followed by mornings of pajama-wearing until noon. It doesn't get any better than that.

This past week I was busy making teacher's gifts for Claire and Anna's teachers. Their classes did group gift cards which is so nice for the teachers. But the girls like to bring in something of their own too to give on that last day. So, we baked some goodies: peanut butter blossoms, rolo pretzel bites (topped with either a big yummy pecan to make turtles or an M&M which is the more kid-pleasing), and this new-to-me recipe for Chocolate Peppermint Ritz Crackers. Holy Girl Scout cookie! These do really resemble Thin Mints and are so easy to make!

Here are the Rolo treats. Also an easy, but oh so good recipe.

They look like little soldiers ready to be baked to yummy, gooey goodness:

And I finally got around to making some Christmas buckets to put all of these goodies in. I am so happy with how these turned out and I had so much fun making them. The girls each selected two and we filled them to the brim with cookies, treats, hot cocoa mix and candy canes. The packaging is everything, isn't it?

So fun to make, and it made the ordinary "cookie plate" seem a lot more special.

I will post again soon. With school out, things should be a lot less hectic around here. Having said that, it's time to get ready for football, basketball & volleyball (all Claire) and a birthday party (Anna's friend) ......all today! And how scary is this.......Meghan is going to the mall with Natalie today, and I (gulp) gave her my credit card. Maybe not the best move?