Cookies!

Wednesday was a big baking day and thankfully my sister was able to come up and help me. We had a good time even though we were both exhausted by the end of the day.

Earlier in the week I had shopped for supplies and gathered my recipes. The day involved seven recipes: sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, fudge, almond roca, white chocolate peppermint covered Oreos, Fluffernutter cookies, and triple chocolate mocha cookies.

Preparations began Tuesday night when I mixed up dough for sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies to chill overnight and mashed up mini candy canes.

 I started baking the sugar and gingerbread cookies early Wednesday morning and had the counters cleaned and free of dough remnants by the time my sister showed up to help with the rest of the baking.

It was fun baking together and everything went smoothly. Having come home from college the day before my sister was pretty tired and I was pretty wore out from ornament personalizing but we were both relatively cheery and happy to be baking together.

I don't know quite how many cookies and sweets we ended up with but I do know there are still tons of gingerbread cats here and I already took a bunch in to work! We filled up a care package box for our brother, a family friend, my hubby's best friend, and my uncle with sweets to spare.

The two new recipes, Fluffternutters and mocha cookies, worked out well. I especially enjoyed toasting marshmallows onto the cookies for the Fluffernutters.

A couple of injuries sustained, I burnt my finger doing roca and my sister jarred her pinky finger during frosting somehow but no blood or blisters!

It meant a lot to me to have my sister come up and bake with me and it meant a lot to actually feel like baking for the first time in a long time. I haven't had super cheery Christmases the last few years, and having some of the cheery back feels really good.

Don't let me fool you, I was totally over-stressed and freaking about mailing out care packages and a little overwhelmed with all the masses of cookies but overall no complete breakdowns and good memories...

Hope to continue my happy streak even though my anxiety and shoulder tension is still bothersome. Seem to be sleeping better and taking my thyroid med regularly, but the holiday season has altered my habits and I'm starting to worry about my schedule after the holidays and continuing improvement in my mood without major backsliding.

We shall see :)