Merry Christmas!

We are getting lots and lots of snow just a day late for a white Christmas! I’m sort of happy about that, though; the past few weeks have been so busy, bad weather would have only complicated things. Hope everyone that is traveling has an easy time getting to their destination.

It really has felt like the 12 days of Christmas around here. We have been doing Christmas-related things nonstop for weeks!

We put up two trees…

(Dustin put the lights unevenly on this one )

…and shopped and wrapped presents to put under them.

We left space directly under the tree ’cause the kitties like to sleep under them.

We baked five zillion cookies…

…of which I ate around 4.8 zillion.

Sugar cookies and spritz cookies and chocolate chips cookies and chocolate & butterscotch chip cookies and Heath Bar crunch cookies, and cookie cookies, and mint chocolate chip brownies!

The spritz cookies (almond flavored) aren’t supposed to look like this, but the dough wasn’t working in the pastry bag, so we improvised and  just rolled them out by hand, LOL.

They look like fingers with painted nails! More appropriate for Halloween.

We changed our plans around a little bit. Instead of having our Feast of 7 Fishes on Christmas Eve, we went to my Aunt Stephanie’s for dinner, then had the fishy feast on Christmas Day. It all worked out pretty well.

There was a smorgasbord of appetizers when we arrived at Aunt Stephanie’s. I kept busy with the celery and carrots.

Our contributions to the dinner were baked ziti, bread from the bakery, and this pretty garden salad:

I made a high pile of it on my salad plate.

Aunt Stephanie made roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, carrots, corn, and two types of cranberry sauce. My plate was overflowing, lol.

Love her dish set!

On Christmas Day my mom went to her cousin’s for an early afternoon dinner while Dustin and I slept in and started on the feast of seven fishes for later that evening.

Feast of Seven Fishes Menu

• Shrimp cocktail
• My version of cioppini (shell-shaped pasta with shrimp, mussels, squid, langostino tails, and lobster tails in red sauce)
• Cold squid salad tossed in olive oil and red wine vinegar
• Stuffed clams
• Snow crab legs
• Garden salad
• Italian bread
• Italian pastries

I made the stuffed clams without the shells and used panko breadcrumbs ; they turned out great!

Then we opened presents!

I got soooo many wonderful things!!! An iPad, a new generation  iPod nano to replace my older one, and a 35mm Canon lens that I wanted for my camera from Dustin!!

A bunch of awesome classic DVDs from him + my cousin…

This pretty little glass basket from my Aunt Gina

Wii game from Grandma!

Nuts galore from several different people! OMG, I’ve been eating them like crazy!!

Lots of cute Hello Kitty stuff!

Really comfortable pink snow shoes from Aunt Gina + Uncle Brian

Plus, a row machine from Dustin…

…which I’m totally going to NEED because he also got me this:

! I’m SO psyched about this!! I can’t wait to make fro yo. YUM! <3

I also received gift cards, hot sauces, and lots of other really nice gifts. I am grateful for each and every one of them—thank you to everybody for your thoughtfulness!!

After opening our presents, we had dessert. A perfectly sweet ending, to a fun holiday (holimonth, lol).

Now we’re snowed in and enjoying the peace and quiet of our warm home while the snow falls furiously from the sky. But since we’ve no place to go, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!!

Tagged as: Christmas, Christmas cookies, cookies, dinner, FEast of Seven Fishes, fish, holidays, pastries, presents, shellfish, snow