Holiday Cheer

As Buddy the Elf says, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.  The second best way is to bake cookies and give them to your friends and neighbors.  So that's what I decided to do.

My Easy Bake Oven has been working overtime lately.  In addition to making cookies for my holiday party, I also participated in a cookie drive for the single military members on base.  I think it is so nice that these young men and women who are serving our country and living a thousand miles from home will at least get some home-baked cookies.  The base commander asked for people to donate cookies and for volunteers to help assemble the packages.  The response was overwhelming!  Our base is pretty small (only around 2,000 people) and we have just over 100 single military members.  We got more than 4,600 cookies!! 

My cookie contribution

It was so awesome to be a part of the effort.  I only made around 50 cookies, but some people brought in two or three hundred at a time!  We ended up having so many cookies that we greatly expanded the recipient list to include the post office, fire station, police dog kennel (for the trainers, not the dogs), and a lot of other important offices.  We were also able to distribute holiday cards from people all over the world who send messages to military members through the Red Cross.  It was awesome.

And, on a personal note, it was awesome for me because it was the first time I got to make Christmas cookies!  I make cookies all the time, but I've never really had a chance to use red and green frosting.  Ha!  And how cute are the little men?  I'm in love.

I also wanted to make a little something for my next door neighbors, the trash collectors and the mailman.  I have only met one set of neighbors so far, but they're really nice.  I am hoping to meet the other ones as soon as I stop being lazy and go introduce myself. 

Trash collection and mail service are different here than I'm used to.  The trash guys (or rubish collectors) come right up to your door to pick up your trash.  You don't have to put your rubish bin on the street.  Our driveway is pretty long too, so it's really convenient for us.  They also leave you new trash bags!  So considerate. The post man also comes right to your door.  I don't have a mailbox, I only have a slot in my door that the mailman slides the mail into.  It feels very small-town to me.  I love it.

I decided to make a couple of different kinds of cookies and put them in little cookie jars.  Two of my favorite cookies are chocolate chip and Oreos.  I am a HUGE Oreo fan.  So much so, that my co-worker bought me a box of double-stuffed Oreos as a going away present :)  The Brits don't have Oreos though, so I made them.  I'll tell you how that went in another post.

I think they turned out really cute and I can't wait to give them away.  Happy holidays everyone!