Handmade for Christmas

This year, I actually managed to do the Christmas baking I always hope to do! In general, I had to cut way back on our gift-giving this year, regretfully so. However, there were a few people (The Boy's teachers, the moms who bring Big Girl home from school...) who I really wanted to thank in some sort of Christmas-giving way.

So I made Christmas baking a priority!

I baked Maple Pear Pies, Zucchini Bread, and three kinds of cookies (candy cane, ginger snap, and sugar puff). I also bought my current holiday obsession from Trader Joe's, Candy Cane Joe-Joe's.




I wrapped up the cookies I baked and the Trader Joe's cookies into one package, and affixed a note: "Some sweets to enjoy now, and some to save for later when you need a little Christmas!"


So I had the cookie packages, the Maple Pear pies, and the zucchini bread loaves, as well as some custom return address labels I designed and printed for people. I hope it spread a little of the Christmas spirit and conveyed my feelings of thanks!


The girls also got into the spirit of handmade gifts!
For their best friends, they made bread dough picture frames. Here they are baking in the oven for 2 hours:


And here they are after baking!


We added some touches to highlight that they were handmade and personal!


After sealing the frames, we added a photo of the friendly pair to each frame.


We're all very pleased with them!