I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. Here’s a glimpse into the merry making, baking, building and homemade goodness that happened here.

Dolls were sewn, up until the very last minute. They are from Sewing for Children, with bit of my own adaptations in the dresses. 

My oldest daughter, who helped me play santa this year with the stockings but still took joy in leaving a letter out with the cookies for santa, was the most thrilled with her homemade doll bed – built by my dad. It was the total wow, freak out kid moment when they get just what they wanted for Christmas but never dreamed it would really actually happen. I wish I had it on video, but instead of playing with my camera I was soaking in the moment. And I’m glad for that too.

She is an American Girl doll lover and has been since my parents gave her the doll Kit Kitridge when she four. She really wanted the bed for Mckenna, who was the 2012 doll of the year. She has wanted it for a good six months, and more than she has ever wanted anything in her life. She knows it was expensive, too much for me to rationalize spending on a doll bed.

In September the bed sold out. My daughter thought it was no longer an option, and there was no point even asking santa for it. My dad is a master builder. Two years ago he build a triple bunk bed for her dolls, a week before Christmas, when the homemade version santa ordered off Ebay never arrived – ever!

Coming to the rescue again, he built one for her. He did so based on this Youtube tutorial. The Gramps made version is way better than the store bought version, just because it’s built by him.

I sewed the bedding and ordered some accessory items from Etsy. It was the gift of the year!

I had big plans to make many gifts for the girls this year. But when it came down to it, I realized having a mom who was present, and not up sewing half the night before, was more important than recieving more gifts.

When my dad rolled up in his santa sleigh (okay SUV) on Christmas Eve, he carried something else so massive that I was glad I let all my homemade gifting guilt go, because he did it for me.

About two weeks ago he called asking what he could make for the other girls, since he had made the doll bed. I gave him the idea of a treehouse kind of fort that could provide open play, to be given to one special middle girl needing something unique and special to her. I sent this link to an Etsy site, for ideas. And he built this.

It is doing just what I hoped, in merging the three sisters together through play, with this special gift to my middle child who so often plays the typical role of, well, the middle child.

As for other family  members, everyone received calendars and photos gifts from Shutterfly. After two days sitting at my computer and uploading more than 250 photos  – I decided that computerized photo gifts totally count as homemade.

The making I focused on this Christmas, was the food, and the merry eating.

When our kitchen was being renovated the contractors found a recipe card for “Kris Kringle Punch” behind the cabinets that were removed. The card is brown with age and hardly tattered. I taped it inside my new cabinets with plans to make it every Christmas. My immediate guess was it belonged to the couple who lived in our house the 35 years prior to us buying it.

The lady, Mrs. Weaver, was quite the cook we hear. Her best friend, aging with alzheimer’s and widowed just this year, still lives in the house across the street. So I  took her some punch for sharing.  Her daughter was there getting ready to do their annual cooking baking tradition. She returned the jar later with holiday decorated sugar cookies for the girls. That was very merry! 

The punch was hit at our house too. It did have added sugar (I only used 1/3 instead of 2/3 cups of sugar). But I liked that the red coloring simply came from frozen raspberries. I do believe we started something that will be repeated next year.

The holidays are for sweets right?

I laughed at the site of this cream cheese chocolate chip ball served with graham crackers, after three little girls with three little knives had their way with it. 

Everyone needs to make something off Pinterest sometime during the holidays – right? Mine was this Cinnamon roll Christmas Tree, from Made it on Monday.

It was made totally from scratch. I do love the site of dough rising in my husband’s grandmother’s wooden biscuit making bowl. 

I didn’t realize going into it that the recpie made enough dough for four trees! So we sent one off with friends, along with some punch, on their Christmas travels.  The rest of the dough was turned into a french toast casserole, enjoyed for breakfast with a spinach quiche, after all the presents were opened. The casserole was a spur of the moment creation adapted from The Pioneer Women, using a pan of cinnamon rolls instead of sourdough bread, and leaving out the sugars since there was already plenty in the rolls. This might have been more tasty than the tree – but not as pretty. 

I love quiche! It’s my quick, go to meal for all meals with fresh farm eggs and veggies that are in the fridge. It took a few times to get the crust perfected, from here. Now, I will never allow my husband to buy another store-bought pie crust for his pecan pie again. He can, for the record, make three things – sweet tea, pecan pie and biscuits. And he’s looking to add pimento cheese to the list. But he brings me coffee in bed every morning – so I will never complain.

The Christmas morning quiche had onions, pesto, a mix of spinach and chard, goat cheese and some leftover shredded pizza cheese mix from our Christmas eve pizza making dinner, featuring holiday shaped pizzas.  I beat about six eggs with about 1/4 cup half and half, salt and pepper, – pour it over the crust with greens and veggies, and then top with cheese. You really can’t go wrong and the dish is a veggie lover’s protein delight. 

I didn’t take pictures of the actually Christmas dinners we hosted – twice – with two different sides of the family. Being a vegetarian my whole adult life, even though there is some meat I now cook for the three out of the five meat eaters in our family, I don’t think I could ever cook a turkey. It’s way too massive an undertaking for me. Usually, I rest happily assured that someone else will have that under control, like my mother-in-law with her vintage smoker.

This year my husband received a frozen Honey Baked Ham and turkey from a work colleague as gift. So he was in charge of the meat and the turkey gravy. He passed, and maybe we can add gravy to his list, maybe – it was from a packet. Does that count as cooking?

I am proud to say that besides that bag of potatoes (for mashed potatoes), every other dish and salad served this Christmas came from Farmer Megan and our CSA. There was kale, chard, spinach, carrots, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. And that’s what we ate for holiday dinners. If she didn’t grow it, I didn’t make it.  And that was a very merry feeling.

For more snapshot sof merry happenings this holiday, see this post – Snapshots of the Season.