twas the days after Christmas.......

Ho - ho - ho - hope your Christmas was filled with delight. I purposely stayed away from the keyboard over the holidays so I would spend my time doing fun stuff like baking cookies, visiting, sleigh riding, napping, eating, watching cheesy Christmas movies......... all that good stuff that goes along with Christmas and the holiday season. Fortunately , unlike my friend Karen, (poor Karen)
I didn't catch a cold nor did my hubby.
I did try some new Christmas cookie recipes though. I LOVE baking and this year I tried 3 new recipes.

The first was peppermint snowballs. They are cookies that get filled with a peppermint cream, baked and rolled in crushed candy canes and powdered sugar. Yummy! Speaking of candy canes my D.H. made me a set of 3 candy cane decorations for the yard. He's a real handy guy.

The next cookies were coco-mints. You make coco wafers and then sandwich them with green mint filling. Also yummy!
The third new recipe was double peanut butter cookies. You make the dough, which is peanut butter dough, form into logs, chill, slice and then add a small dollop of peanut butter, cover with second slice, seal the edges and bake. They are super peanuty flavorful! double yum!

Christmas eve we drove around to see some Christmas lights but didn't go to our usual light display neighborhood because we go there so much we know it by heart. So we picked a different neighborhood and we did catch a few ambitious displays.

We spent Christmas eve at my D.H.'s step brothers house for a tappas party and wow did they have a wonderful assortment! There were 2 kinds of shrimp, salmon and capers, lots of cheeses, chutneys, fruit, carved ham sandwiches, 3 kinds of ravioli, the squash ravioli was awesome! They had sausages, Italian wedding soup and then of course desserts - I will post the recipe for the nut yule log in a day or two for you.  It was unbelievable and it's a super easy no bake recipe. I usually don't even try fruit cake type loafs because they are not always very appetizing. You know all the jokes about doorstops and anchors right? Well, I had 3 pieces of this one - oink -oink!
Christmas Day was going to be in laws over for brunch but my FIL was in the hospital until late Christmas eve. He was too weak still to bring on an outing, so we shared the mid day meal with my FIL and MIL at their assisted living center then came home and took a short nap and then eventually got around to opening gifts.
Our Christmas dinner was quiet, we threw some nice beef tenderloins on the grill and relaxed the rest of the evening. 
I still have a few Christmas cards to mail out - yes really. I know it's almost 2012 but that's another story.......