The best season of all: day 1

At our house December is a month-long celebration of the approaching winter, of magic that surrounds the season of Christmas and New Year. We don't do proper Advent because it was not part of the culture in which we grew up and I can't really get into it for some reason. So instead we try to  do a little craft, read a  book, bake something delicious every day or two.

Today D. brought a lovely holiday tree from his clay class

We read " Trouble with trolls" (it takes place in early spring actually, which I didn't know :D) , "The Hat" (which inspired us to find all kinds of silly things to use as a hat) and "Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett.

We baked our first cookies of the season.

Chocolate holiday cookies:

3/4 c of butter

1 c of sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 big eggs

2 c of flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp soda

1/2 c of cocoa

chocolate chips

powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix butter, cocoa, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract.

2. Mix dry ingredients and add to wet ingredients. Fold in chocolate chips.

3. Chill for an hour (if butter was not fully melted chilling is not required)

4. Put little balls of dough on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

5. Bake for 12 minutes, set cookies aside to cool. Dust with powdered sugar.

So it begins, we hanged our first decoration in the house, cross-stitching I made last year.