Baking in December!

We started the baking today.  It's a tradition in our home to make homemade gifts for our family.  This year we decided to bake for our homemade gifts.  I put together gift baskets with a few small items and some baked goodies.  The homemade gifts are usually done by the whole family, but this year Jeremy and I did them.  The children just watched and picked.  It's taken years but we now work together pretty well.  Probably unusual to see a man in the kitchen, but I must say I have a pretty great and unusual man!  I would not be the woman I am today without him.  God has enabled me to trust him with my whole heart.  We make a pretty good team and have fun doing it.

The apron I'm wearing came from my great grandmother.  I have several, but this one's one of  my favorites.

Here's where it all begins!

So we started off making fudge, using the recipe on the back of the marshmellow cream jar.

Next we made chocolate no-bake cookies.

1/4 cup baking cocoa   1/4 cup peanut butter
2 cup sugar                    2 cups quick oats
1/2 cup butter                 1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk                      
In a large sauce pan add first four ingredients, bring to a boil over med-hi heat for 2 min.  Take off heat and add remaining ingredients.  Drop on waxed paper.  Let cool.

Then we made sugar cookies and sprinkled powdered sugar on for the topping.  They are sitting on a old christmas tray I picked up at a thrift store for about 50 cents!

While were talking about projects.  I thought I would share some things we've been doing in December.  We've been studying the names or titles of Jesus.  Along studying we have done many craft projects.  I have learned so much.  I never realized how many different things Jesus is called or calls himself.  I feel closer to knowing Him.  I think every year I come to recognize something new about this season and the birth of Jesus.  This year I would have to say the realization of the conditions of where he was born was not so hot.  It's funny when you read the bible how you just lump the accounts of things as "stories".  We put in our mind how great things were, or looked, almost like a fantasy.  When if you really think about the true story and how things probably were, they usually weren't at all pleasant or fictitious.  Anyway, so I was just thinking about the stable, and how dirty and smelly it must have been.  For sure no place we would want to have our baby.  But once again God is bigger than us and so are His plans.  So here are a few pictures of some of what we've done.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace!

Jesus is the Lamb of God!

Jesus is the Unspeakable Gift!

For this project we wraped a box and cut a slit in the top.  We have a stack of paper beside the box, and everyday we all put one thing we're thankful for inside it.  Then on Christmas Eve we'll read all the thanks.

  When the kids were done making the projects we just incorporated them in our Christmas decor.