It's Getting Close!

This was our front yard a few years ago Christmas Day.
Pic courtesy of Mom


I am starting to get ready for my favorite part of preparing for Christmas…baking! The last two trips to the grocery store I have been buying extra flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, chocolate squares, butter, cream cheese and all kinds of other ingredients. The week after Thanksgiving I will start baking. First I will make cookies that can be placed in the freezer for a few weeks without affecting the taste. The closer to Christmas we get, I will start making cookies that are best eaten right away. I have some cookies that I bake almost every year: frosted sugar cookies, chocolate covered cherries, coconut dreams and mini pecan pies. Every year I also enjoy looking for new recipes I have never made before.

I do some shopping for gifts every year, but not a ton of it. The King does a lot of the wrapping of the gifts, he likes doing that. That works well because I would rather not wrap. The expense of sending Christmas cards got to be too much, so we do not do that any more. The Princess and Trucker decorate the tree. They do some decorating around the house. I guess we all share in the Christmas fun.

The baking has always been my favorite part of Christmas, getting ready for Christmas I should say. When the kids were real young I still did a lot of baking, plus send out cards and decorate the house and tree. Then I read in a book one day that preparing for Christmas should be fun. We should do what we enjoy and make sure we are not neglecting Christ over the season. If we are running ourselves ragged trying to get ready for Christmas and don’t spend any time with Jesus, we miss out on one of God’s greatest gifts to us. I don’t remember what book I read that it in, but the author’s advice was to put Christ first (like we always should) and then choose one or two other Christmas related activities we really enjoy and focus on them.

I thought that was some good advice. It also came at the perfect time for me. The kids were getting big enough to help with some of the other stuff and I had even more time to focus on the baking!

Leave me a comment on your favorite part of preparing for Christmas. Christmas Eve service at church and spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family are very important to me, but I am talking about the stuff leading up to the big day!