There is nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked cookies in the morning, especially around Christmas time...
The weeks leading up to Christmas have been full of TO DO's, I have tried to stick to my weekly to do list but somehow time always manages to get away from me and before I know it the week is over and we are one step closer to Christmas!
As a family we have always put our tree up on the 16th of December. I have asked my mother what the significance of the 16th of December was and she said she couldn't tell me they have always done it that way and it was passed down from my great grandmother. Who knows?! I wanted to put our tree up on the 1st of December already but truth is I never got around to doing it until a week ago but now it is up in all its gold and silver glory and it looks FABulous!
All the gifts are wrapped and under the tree. When the tree is up and the gifts are wrapped, THAT is when it starts to feel like Christmas to me.
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| Excuse the quality of the photo, I take all my pictures with my phone camera. |
I have so many fond memories of all of our Christmas' together as a family. Of course when you get older and you realise that Santa in fact doesn't exist, the excitement of receiving and opening the gifts fades but spending quality family time becomes more important. This year everyone is so excited that there is a young child in the family again who doesn't understand much or that Santa doesn't exist, so we can start having Santa come over to the house to hand out the gifts again like we used to back in the day.Camden is only 5 months old so we will be bringing the Santa aspect back as of next year.
This Christmas is going to be extremely special as it is our first Christmas with Camden and possibly the last Christmas we get to share with my grandfather who is terribly ill with liver cancer. I am going to soak up as much of this Christmas as I can!
We decided to not put Camden in your traditional Christmas outfit this year due to the fact that here in SA you just can't find cute kiddie Christmas outfits but he is still going to look so dashing in his cute little outfit that we have put together and I cannot wait for Christmas day so I can dress him in his little red shorts and suspenders that my mom made along with his reindeer ears.
Ok so back to the baking.
A tradition in our family was that my Great Grandfather Marshall would make everyone a fruit cake for Christmas, I sure loved his fruit cake. Since his passing, we haven't really had anyone to carry on this tradition and I have always wanted to make and decorate a fruit cake, so I made my first reindeer topper, it looks more like a teddy but it will do as my first attempt. We covered the fruit cake in fondant and placed the reindeer on top. This cake is the main feature on our sweet treat table.
I think Grandpa M would be proud!
We have baked some sugar cookies, rolled out some fondant and cut out shapes using the same cookie cutter as we used for the cookies and we then decorated them to match our gold and silver Christmas theme. I really enjoyed making these and they look so awesome on our table.
You can find the recipe here.
Lastly we baked some of my mom's signature vanilla cupcakes with caramel butter icing and added the toppers to them that my mom worked on until all hours of the morning.
We always try to go the extra mile to decorate the Christmas table for Christmas Eve dinner. I think we have done a pretty good job again this year. I cannot wait to share photo's of our sweet treat table.
Now to finish cooking, set the table and wait for the family to arrive!
Merry Christmas to all.
Enjoy every moment you get to spend with your family over this festive season, time is so short.
