The Object of my Baking

It's day two of the official Christmas countdown in our home. A high of 64 today confuses my emotions a bit as I fight back tears at every mentioned tradition of old. The day is busy and I long to sit and rest but the excitement of my girls wins out and I settle into my kitchen for much of my day.

Today we made what I call Aunt Becky's Christmas Cookies. Growing up, I looked forward to the celebration with my maternal side of the family. Every year, my Aunt Becky would bring her sour cream cut-out cookies; brightly frosted and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. It was a highlight of the season for me. I could dream about the colorful frosted treats even today.

For a good handful of years or more now, I have been baking a spread of Christmas cookies. Needing some color for the tray, it seemed logical to ask my aunt for her coveted recipe. Only one batch of cookies needs to be baked due to the fact that it makes around 60 cookies. I think the girls enjoy helping make these the most due to the fact that they can help cut-out the shapes to frost and decorate prior to enjoying the treat on their tongues.

The dough is a little delicate and sticky so they don't get to help roll it out. With the girls lined up at the counter, chosen cookie cutter in hand, my aggravation with the rolling pin in hand grew. I expressed my frustration agreeing with my daughter's clarification that the dough (and not my children) was the object of annoyance.

Eventually, the dough was rolled out and trees, stars, stockings and candy canes took shape. While I had forgotten to preheat the oven, it appeared things were going smoothly. I put the first pans of cookies in the oven setting the timer for the lesser 10 minute timeframe than the 12 potentially needed. With 2 minutes remaining on the timer, my nose alerted my senses. Opening the oven, I was immediately irritated to find burnt cookies.

Apparently, ovens don't work exactly as they should when they approach 17 years of operation. The next batches all cooked in less than 7 minutes each and I managed to salvage this Advent experience.

This seems more and more to be a year of learning to let go. While today did not play out quite to my satisfaction, it was a good Christmas memory for my girls. They each enjoyed decorating cookies, licking frosting and eating sprinkles. My Christmas tray may not be to perfection but my love for my girls was the object of my baking; not the approval of others. It's about time I learn that.

Aunt Becky's Christmas Cookies

1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup shortening (butter preferred)
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. vanilla
5 cups flour

Frosting

1 lb. powdered sugar
1 Tb milk (add up to 5 Tbs to desired consistency)
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. butter (preferred)

Mix ingredients together. Spray and flour pan well. Roll out dough in pan with plenty of flour to prevent breaking cut-outs. Cut out cookies. Roll out to 1/4" or less. Preheat oven to 400*. Cook 10-12 minutes. Cool completely. Frost and decorate. Freeze cookies after cooling for best results.

Advent Begins

"We need to make Christmas cookies!" My four-year-old has been making this demand for well over a week now. It is now tradition to tie our holiday baking in with the reading of our Advent book. Every night, starting December 1st, we begin the countdown to Christmas with one variety of cookie for the season accompanied by the story of Jesus Christ's birth.

My happy Andelise with some Christmas tree sandwich cookies

Our Advent Book is done beautifully by John and Kathy Stockman over at Celebrations and Traditions. If you do not have an Advent tradition, we highly recommend this one! Our girls love to take turns reading as well as opening the unique door for each day. This is our bedtime story through Christmas and it is one thing I confidently embrace as tradition for our family.

As for the first day of our Advent Christmas Cookies,I was finding myself more Grinch-like than usual this season and didn't have many ingredients on hand for our standard go to treats.  After thumbing through my recipes, I decided to try the Pampered Chef All-Occasion Cookies from their Celebrate cookbook with a Christmas twist. My girls and my husband tell me they were a tasty treat.

Here's the recipe:

All-Occasion Cookies

1 package (18.25 oz) devil's food cake mix
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 pound (4 sticks) butter or margarine, divided (do not use vegetable oil spread)

Filling

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
6 to 8 drops green food coloring
1 teaspoon peppermint extract (optional - I did NOT use)

Preheat oven to 350*F. In small bowl, microwave 2 sticks of butter on High 1 minute or until melted. Slice remaining butter into 1/2 inch pieces, add to melted butter, tossing to coat. Allow butter to stand 3-5 minutes or until softened.

Meanwhile, in large bowl, combine cake mix and flour; blend well using whisk, breaking up any large lumps. Whisk butter until smooth and free of lumps. If necessary, microwave butter an additional 10-20 seconds or until creamy and pourable. Do not melt completely.

Pour butter all at once into dry ingredients, scraping the butter from bowl. Mix until dry ingredients are incorporated and dough is smooth. (If dough is too stiff to stir, knead by hand until smooth.)

Use cookie press to form Christmas tree shaped cookies.

Bake cookies 15-17 minutes. Cool 3 minutes on before moving to cooling rack. Cool completely.

Spread filling between two cookies to complete the sandwich appearance.

Dream Big (Permission Granted)





DREAM BIG

(Permission Granted)

These words appear on the gift of art that my friend gave to me. She followed that present with a journal prominently displaying a quote about dreams. “They scratch at your door… You think it might go away if you ignore it. Wrong. It’s still there when you open the door…”

I love to write. It clears my mind. My soul is uplifted. Scrambled thoughts somehow are organized through the written word. That’s why I blog. I say it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. If for no other reason than the healing this avenue does for my heart, I continue on.

But my friend knows me well enough to encourage the dream that sits waiting for me. For the longest time, it has been safely on a shelf. Beautiful to observe yet waiting for just the right opportunity to reach out and prominently display it for others. Never have I dared to touch it though. Fear of knocking it down from its place of importance only to watch it shatter into pieces has kept me at a distance.

I watch people who have a platform to encourage other women in deepening their relationship with God and find myself pining. My heart longs for the opportunity to spur others on toward love and good deeds. However, real life always gets in the way allowing me to easily shrug off my dreams.

My perceived reality exposes a high school diploma with no higher education to follow. I have no bachelors or masters or PHD to brag about. My oldest is still in grade school with two others behind her. My calling is here in my home. Did I mention that I can’t even keep my house clean? How would God ever entrust me with more when I’m not even faithful with the little things? These are only a few of the excuses that play through my mind debilitating any fantasies of a platform God may have for me.

When my church announced that we would be having a women’s retreat, my mind soared with visions of being a part of something so big on such a small scale. (The big being God’s work in the hearts of women and the small being group size.) I made known my willingness to be involved in the event and didn’t just jump at the opportunity when it was offered to me at a later time. Was this just my desire to be on stage or did God have plans for me in this arena? After thought and prayer, I embraced speaking on the topic of friendships. This has been a subject God was currently working on in my own life.

While encouragement to pursue the speaking engagement came through many avenues, my heart was far from settled as the weekend approached. Sitting among friends who focused on prayer while children played in the background, I shared my fears in pursuing my dreams. To speak such truth has a way of tearing down walls.

While doubt continued to terrorize my mind in an effort to defeat me before I even took the platform, I embraced the encouragement of my friends and held tightly to the Truth. Like Moses, who doubted his ability to be used by the Lord, I could cling to the promise that God would be with me. Believing God prepared me for that night, I confidently presented God’s Blueprints for Friendships to a group of fifty some women (not as small of a group as I had originally envisioned).

My dream is now off the shelf and I’m sorting through the box. It’s time to investigate just how to incorporate this rare commodity into my everyday life. It’s kind of like setting the table with China every night. I don’t want to waste the beautiful gift but I must to be careful not to destroy it.

“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.” - Psalm 37:54-5

"A woman with a confident heart chooses to believe that God wants to make an impact through her life, and she looks for ways to let Him." - Renee Swope, A Confident Heart

Let. It. Go.

"Will you too accept the challenge of backing off on decisions about the holidays?" This came from author Karen Ehman in her email From Chaos to Calm: The Let. It. Go. Christmas Challenge. She discusses how a friend had challenged her to fast for three weeks from making executive decisions in her marriage and family... during the Christmas season. As I read how Karen allowed her son to decorate their yard and home for the Christmas season, I blew her off as a bit extreme. It's one thing to let your husband make the decisions in the home (which I have a difficult time embracing to begin with). It's another to give that kind of power to a child. Who does that? Not anyone of sound mind was the answer I gave myself.

 

I am the kind of woman who has to leave the house on Black Friday (which my girls have now affectionately deemed "Tree Friday") in big part so that I don't criticize the way my family decks the halls. When my husband called to interrupt my solo shopping trip to request that I stop and pick up new strands of Christmas lights, I surprisingly wasn't too bothered. "There are some special requests," he added. I knew the words that were going to come out of his mouth next. Maybe I was confident there was no way I could meet the demands of my children. Possibly, I was having an out-of-body experience. Either way, I told him I would see what I could do. My mission was to find one purple, one pink and one teal strand of Christmas lights.

If you know me at all, you'd likely say that I have a difficult time letting go of tradition. And Christmastime is filled with traditions my daddy established that I hold dear to my heart. My father was very particular about how his tree was trimmed. Just recently, my mom reminded me that he would purchase individual red Christmas lights to replace all the pink lights that came on the multi-colored strand. Maybe that has something to do with why I leave the house on "Tree Friday". For some reason, I feel the need to give direction on every part of decorating "O Tannenbaum". Yet I have no desire to actually deck the halls myself.

The few stores I was shopping in didn't bring success on my mission. I would have to leave the mall. With their large array of Christmas decorations, Menards seemed to be my best bet. Forget the fact that this was the very store I couldn't walk through for months following my dad's death because the smells of hardware and the sights of a carpenter's trade tore at my emotions. I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw the purple strands of lights in front of me. Here I was purchasing not only the pink lights my dad so vehemently detested but purple and teal (technically blue but they look teal lit up) as well.
 

I received a payment of smiles from my girls and husband. It just might be good to let go. Karen has a new book LET. IT. GO. How to Stop Running the Show & Start Walking in Faith. I think my family would highly recommend I read this book. One email allowed me to let go of a major hang up in my life. I can't even imagine what an entire book encouraging me in the same could do!

Thanksgiving Hearts at Home Blog Hop

The Third Thursday in November means a Hearts at Home Blog Hop. Be sure to hope over to Jill's Blog to other thoughts on Thanksgiving.

Why is Thanksgiving important to you and your family? Do you have special memories? Traditions that you keep going year to year? Recipes that have to make an appearance? How is the holiday different for you now that you are a mom?

Thanksgiving...

Traditions...

Holidays...

 

They hold so many fond memories...

And pain that attempts to seize my soul.

My Daddy was a man who embraced Thanksgiving and waited until it was over to celebrate Christmas. There was no "holiday season". It was Thanksgiving. It was Christmas. They were separate and they were special. He is gone. This will be my fifth year celebrating without Him and I still can't get past it... at this time of year.

 

I'd like to call myself a Farmer's daughter but people would challenge that definition. My dad loved to garden much of the 5 acres he owned. Still, it was far from living up to the definition. It was just more than an ordinary garden. There is a love deep in my being for the harvest. It was a family activity. The memories warm my soul and leave it terrorized all at the same time.

 

Traditions are important to me and over these past years, I've had to learn to let go. It's become more important to find meaning in the holiday rather than hang tightly to what used to be. A large family dinner attended by extended family is a bygone. Compromises are offered but it's gotten complicated somehow. It will never be the same.

 

We are exactly one week before Thanksgiving. One would be pressed to know the holidays are approaching in this household. If it weren't for the excited hearts of my children, plans would likely not even be considered.

 

These years have been a journey of letting go... and becoming. There are thoughts to start new traditions but we hold to them loosely. Part of me can't embrace anything that isn't quite as special as what used to be. I don't want my children to one day find disappointment in a holiday because they cannot separate it from the emotions of their tradition. Tradition is good. Just not the pedestal we tend to place it on.

 

Thanksgiving is an attitude I long to instill in my children as a lifestyle. This month is only meant to highlight that. Maybe next year I'll have more to offer. This year it is still simply about letting go.

Here are a couple of great ideas that have come my way in embracing Thanksgiving tradition:

Ann Voskamp's Thanks Giving Tree

Paper Coterie's Gratitude Jar