Christmas Eve,cooking mice,and still no spell check

The Christmas tree is looking rather bare this morning.  The packages have been opened and gone to their respective homes, the turkey carcass is ready to go in the stock pot, the pies have been eaten and the Christmas dishes are in the dishwasher, clean and ready to be put away for another year.  What a lovely time with family and friends.  We had a big crowd on Christmas Eve and a small one on Christmas Day.  The only things missing were the snow birds down in the sunny south safe from the ice, snow and windchills that we have here.

I'm going to back up a bit.  There was a lot of cooking going on here the day before Christmas.  I love to cook and I usually have a little helper here assisting me.  Thanks to Miss Pea over at Pea's Corner we were making the little mice that she made a couple of weeks ago.


Dipping the cherries in chocolate.

Adding the Hersey Kiss to the front and putting the slivered almonds on for the ears.

Adding the eyes.  We didn't have a small tip for the frosting so our eyes were a bit iffy.

The finished project!  Notice the dab of frosting on Miss T's lip!!! Hummmmmmmm.........

We had everyone eat one when they came in before they could open a present.  We told them that they were real mice dipped in chocolate.  :o)  This is Ana our first mouse eater!

I love to bake for the holidays.  Especially yeast rolls.  They are so easy and my family raves about them which makes me feel good!

It's always good to have a glass of eggnog to sip on while baking.

My heavy duty mixer does most of the kneading for me.

I always like to do some though,  it's just a good down home feeling to be kneading dough.

The finished product!  Yum!

Christmas Eve the whole family arrived about 5 pm.  I had hot cider simmering ready for them to partake.  DIL's Mom makes the best frosted brownies and I would show you a picture but they are all gone!  DIL makes her famous hot chicken dip that is to die for and others bring other goodies too.  Peanut butter balls, cookies, pies etc.  We have the stange tradition of getting several big buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, mashed potato, gravy and coleslaw too.

After we eat the little ones open their stockings first and then I play Santa and the fun begins.

Grampie and Mr. D.

Matching Nascar jackets for D and K!

A snowboard for Cousin K!

A new nighty for Miss T!

Guess I should finish this up as your eyes are probably glazed over by now.  Will continue next post.  I had a wonderful surprise Christmas morning.  I got an e-mail saying that I had won Donna's give away of an AUTOGRAPHED copy of Pioneer Woman's cookbook!!!!!!! As you know I had bought a copy but of course it wasn't autographed so this was so exciting!!!  Thank you Donna for having such a nice give away, I love it!  Now I'm trying to decide if I should have a give away for the one I already had.......what do you think?  It's been used a few times but I don't think there are any stains on it.  Let me know what you think, is it correct to give away one that I have used??????  It's a GREAT cookbook with lots of wonderful pictures in it and as Donna said there are cowboys so we will take a moment of silence just to think about that! :o)