Christmas 2010

Our Christmas gifts this year were all about homemade goodies!! Hannah and her friend Kelsey came over the weekend before Christmas for a baking marathon. The girls made caramel chex mix and Christmas cut-outs. The always bubbly Kelsey:
I was on dish duty most of the time and ended up doing most of my baking on the 23rd & 24th. It was so relaxing and a great way to unwind before Christmas. I love baking while listening to Andrea Bocelli's Cmas tunes.
Mikey's favorite Christmas cookies involve kisses:
Ta da! The peanut butter blossom assembly line (with the always present Annabelle):
Next I made a new mint cookie that involved melting an entire bag of Ghirardelli chocolate in the dough:
Once the brownie-like cookie came out of the oven, I placed an Andes mint on top to melt:
I've showed countless photos of my go-to granola so I'll spare you that photo again but I packaged it up in an adorable mason jar:
Another new thing this year was butter toffee nuts but there was no time to snap a photo. All packaged up:
Mint Meltaways:
P.B. Blossoms:
I love giving homemade gifts and I hope the recipients enjoyed their tasty treats. Giving homemade treats was an economical way to make gifts for a bunch of our family members this year. I really enjoyed it and have ideas for next year-- fancy nut butters and biscotti.

We partook in our family traditions again this year. We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house. We always have appetizers & wine and open most of our gifts. On Christmas morning, my mom makes brunch and we open up our stockings. Then, we usually watch a movie that somebody got for Christmas. This year Santa brought my mom "Despicable Me" and it was a pretty cute movie.

Mid-afternoon we packed up the car to head to Mike's parents for dinner & gift opening. The Fudala fam has a long standing tradition of having Beef Tenderloin on Christmas Day. It was served with smashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. Dessert was light this year: Gingersnaps from TJ's dipped in pumpkin flavored cool whip.
Gift opening was fun with Sienna & Sydnie being really excited with all of their new toys.
We spent the next day doing some shopping (Dianne and I went to Macy's while Mike & John went to Cigar Jones) and Mikey made Fish Tacos (with Tuna) for dinner.
I must have been a little photoed out as I didn't snap a single shot over the 3 days. It was a bit of a whirlwind but a good time overall.
We headed back to Duluth so that Mikey could get back to work. UMD had a 3 day furlough between Christmas & New Years and so I've had 11 days off of work (combination of official holidays & furlough days). I have been b.u.s.y.
I'll have an update on what I've been up to around the house in the next few days.