We have snow. It started around one with small flakes. Right now the flakes are huge and sporadic. I keep watching. They mesmerize me. We probably have a couple of inches, but some spots have less. I can see my walkway. Let it snow, let it snow!

I am a busy elf. I have started my Christmas goodie making. Yesterday I finished my toffee. While I was finishing the candy, my dogs sat below the counter drooling. I gave them a piece without the chocolate thus perpetuating their drooling.

When I was a kid, by this week, most of the Christmas preparations were finished. All that was left was the baking. My mother set whole afternoons away for the cookies. One of them was spritz cookies. My mother operated the press. You pushed the dough in the press down to the medal plate at the bottom. Each plate had a different design like a wreath or a tree. We never decorated them except my mother would add food coloring to the dough so the trees were green and other cookies were red. I have family stories about spritz cookies. My father only ate the non-colored cookies. He said the food coloring changed the flavor. We just smiled and nodded. One year I gave my mother an electric spritz maker. It went rogue. Dough flew all over. She never used it again. When my sister and her family from Colorado came for Christmas, she had made all sorts of cookies. I too had made cookies. We both made spritz cookies. They were part of our family Christmas lore. I have my mother’s press. I make the cookies every now and then. I color the dough.

Sugar cookies have always been my favorite. My mother had tin cookie cutters with a sort of handle on the top. Now they call them vintage. She had Santa with a pack on his back, a tree, an angel with wings, a reindeer and my favorite, a camel. She’d do the mixing and the rolling, and we’d do the pressing and the decorating. The kitchen smelled so wonderful while the cookies were baking. She’d pull the cookies sheet out of the oven and put them on the counter. We always begged for one. She’d give us one still warm from the oven. It never disappointed. We’d decorate after the cookies had cooled. That was the most fun.

Today I have some more Christmas to make. I won’t tell what as some of friends need to be surprised. Christmas is filled with surprises.

This entry was posted on December 14, 2025 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.