In December, we love to celebrate Merry Monday. It's a night of food, good company, and games. This month I am going to add a spiritual lesson since not only do we want to have fun, but we also want to remember why we are celebrating this season.
This week I kept the food pretty simple. Let's face it, we don't always want to be cooking all day long, especially after the Thanksgiving holiday!

We had very simple Christmas Tree French Toast. I even added pumpkin puree into the egg concoction. They were delicious and easy.
Directions on how to create the shape can be found on this post. It's super easy.

Thank you to Martha Stewart and her team in helping me create these yummy cookies. Everyone loved them!
Stained-Glass Sugar Cookies
Adapted from Everyday Food, December 2011- A Martha Stewart Magazine
Ingredients:
- 3 cups flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter-room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 4 large egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup very finely crushed hard candy - I used candy canes
To make:
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy- about 3 minutes. Add egg yolks and vanilla and beat to combine.
3. With mixer on low, gradually add flour mixture and beat to combine.
4. Form dough into 2 disks, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate 30 minutes.
5. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough between floured parchment paper to 1/8-inch thickness. Stack dough in parchment on a baking sheet; refrigerate until firm, 30 minutes.
6. Cut out dough using any shape you would like. Place cookies, 1 inch apart, on parchment paper. With a smaller cutter, cut out dough in center of each cookie.
7. Bake until cookies are pale but set. Remove sheet from oven; fill cutouts with crushed candy. Bake until cookies begin to brown at edges and candy is melted. Let cool on wire racks.
What I did... I used a nifty cookie cutter that not only cut out the round shape, but also the inner shape. After I baked mine, I found I had a mess of candy cane all over the top of the cookie (it may be because I am not a perfectionist and just spooned in the candy cane and got it all over the cookie.) I found when I turned the cookies over, they looked beautiful!

The game for the evening consisted of Reindeer Bowling. The kids absolutely loved it! You can find the instruction and printouts at Prepared NOT Scared!
Please share some of your celebrations for this Christmas season!!!
