Tis the Season

I love Christmas time and the whole Christmas season. As a child I remember pulling out all the Christmas decorations as soon as Thanksgiving was over and decorating the whole house. It was wonderful! My mom loved to decorate for the season and I guess I learned that from her. I have boxes of Christmas decorations and I love it when I pull them out and start decorating the house. This year we were going to be spending Christmas in Utah and so I decided not to go all out on the decorations – I did a few but not the “normal” amount. I didn’t even put up a tree this year. We have a plant that is very tall and I put some bows and stuff on that and called it my tree. Although it wasn’t my normal decorating bonanza it was still beautiful and brought the Christmas spirit into our home.
Another tradition that I learned from my mom was making plates of treats to give to friends and neighbors. Every year I make some kind of treat to give around and of course this year was no different. A friend from work makes chocolates and said she would teach me the tricks of chocolate making. So I took a day and make all kinds of chocolate truffles, barks, and boxes. I used chocolate molds to make boxes and candies to put inside the edible boxes. Then we made Raspberry Truffles, Mint Dark Chocolate Truffles, Cinnamon Milk Chocolate Truffles (not Jason’s favorite!), Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Truffles, and Nutella Truffles. As well as White Chocolate Peppermint Bark and Milk Chocolate Smores Bark. It was so yummy, pretty, and easy. We put them in nice boxes to deliver and added a bow on top! I was so proud of myself. We made close to 100 boxes between the 2 of us. It was a lot of work but totally worth it.
Before we left for Utah we had one final tradition we had to fulfill – the Chicago Christkindl Market with our buddies Rob and Tiff. Every year since we moved here we have gone downtown to Daley Plaza for the Christkindl German Market. We always get a mug and sometimes an ornament. Then we walk around the city and look at all the lights and decorations. Of course we go to Macy’s (formerly Marshall Field) and see their window displays and huge trees. Play with the toys in FAO Schwartz and enjoy the perks of living in a big city. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun!