Christmas baking

*lots of pictures below*
We spent 12 hours on Sunday getting our Christmas baking done.

We baked/cooked up 11 different items. No pictures of the little elves ... after we finished the shopping, we got in our comfy cozies and started baking to Christmas music. Let's just say we weren't beauty pagent material! The elves included
my sister, my sister in law, our lifetime friend from school and me. My nephew came over for a bit to help us w/ Magoo. My "twonager" is a job in itself. We simply couldn't keep this kid out of the kitchen otherwise.

Talk about tired at the end of the night. OH BOY! My sister kept calling for "union breaks" throughout the day, she was funny.

We spent the day getting our list together, shopping, teasing each other, measuring, whipping, stirring, giggling, baking, cooking on the stove top, non stop chasing after Matthew, non stop washing bowls and dishes.

We did have one cookie casualty, the Pumpkin/Choc Chip cookies. Too bad, they sure looked good ~ but tasted like crap. *giggling* The recipe didn't include the 5 cups of flour we needed, so we didn't include it in our shopping ... so, my friend had her husband bring us the flour she had in the freezer.... major party foul.... it was freezer burned and *gag*... made the cookies taste nasty... they tasted like the flour smelled... you know what I mean???

Some of the ingredients.
The assembly line!

Little Santa cookies ~ made w/ Nutter Butter cookies... aren't they adorable!! We didn't have to bake these, but they sure took a while!

These are Chocolate & Cream Cheese sandwich cookies. These are so rich, you can only eat one. The Fantasy Fudge is in the back.

My goodness, these are the Chocolate Mint Dreams. We will double or triple this next year. I screwed these up, actually... I left out 1/2 of the 1 cup of the mini chocolate chips ... GAH! These do not look like the picture at all!! Oh well, they sure taste good.

Candied Spice Pecans. I could not stop picking at these. SO ADDICTING. My parrot sure wanted some of these.

Mom's homemade, easy breezy, yummy Peanut Brittle from when we were kids.

Ginger Snappies.

Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars. A big time favorite, too.

Mom's No Bake Chocolate/Coconut/Oatmeal/Peanut Butter drops. It's an old family favorite, too! We need to triple these next time.

Fresh Cranberry/Orange cookie drops. I wasn't sure I'd like these, but they are sooo awesome.. I could not keep my hands off them. Love that tangy, tart and sweet taste.

I am so totally bummed... I had a picture of the table filled with all the goodies on their tins ... but I must not have "saved" to my phone. *big sad pouty face*

This is Sunnie checking out all the treats!! He was BEGGING for some pecans ... but the sweets won't be good for his beak. I had to put my foot down and say NO.

This is Matthew trying to help keep up busy. We had taped up all the recipes on my cupboards for easy reading.

Finally, about 9 o'clock ... we ordered pizza. Get this, the pizza delivery guy pretty much hustled almost a 50% tip. I could not believe he practically "guilted" my neib for a huge tip!!!!

Of course we were going to tip the guy ... but not a gosh darn 50% tip ... it put my friend totally on spot .... after asking for our change back a couple times, he just let the guy have it.

I won't be ordering pizza from that pizza place again. It's a very well known popular pizza joint. Not sure they'd be happy knowing their pizza driver begs.