And...the baking continues! In the past two days, I've made some additional date pinwheel cookies, gingerbread "birds" and "turtle" cookies. I also spent the morning cutting out snowflakes with my 2 1/2 year old and planning dinner for Christmas Day (more on that later).

I don't have a great gingerbread recipe passed down over the years; I use a boxed mix that you just add water to. I could probably find a recipe in one of my Grandma's old cook books, but I'm sure if you go to Martha Stewart's website you can find a nice old-fashioned recipe. Of course, my "easy" version was complicated by the fact that I don't have a bird-shaped cookie cutter; I drew a cardboard template and cut around it with a small paring knife. I do sometimes get a little overly-creative (i.e. crazy) at this time of year, despite my lack of time and energy! Seriously though, they turned out great!

The "turtle" cookies aren't from scratch either...a girl's got to have a few shortcuts to avoid a total breakdown!