Treats for Neighbors - A Holiday Tradition

 For the last few years, the kids and I have been making plates of treats for our neighbors to hand out during the holidays. Some years this would be much more involved, including multiple types of cookies and homemade candies. This year I decided to make it a lot easier on myself and stick to just chocolate chip cookies. Generally we hand out treats later in December, but I thought it would be nice to kill two birds with one stone and drop off Christmas cards for everyone as we make our deliveries.  It seems silly to put cards in the mail for our neighbors anyway!

I have been ordering Christmas cards through Tiny Prints for the last few years. They offered a blog partnership this year and I was of course all in. I would have purchased my cards from them anyway. There is an amazing selection of beautiful card options and it is so easy to customize them for your family. The hardest part is deciding which template to go with because they are all so pretty. It always takes me forever.

Today Pearl and Axel decided they wanted to make the first batch of cookies for our neighbors all by themselves. I did end up cracking the eggs and they let baby Flo dump in the chocolate chips. We had to sweep up some chocolate from the floor, but Flora was delighted to help. Tomorrow we will make our deliveries!

-Kira

My baking attempt

This afternoon we sat around and played Rail Baron for four hours.  It's kind of the longest game ever.  Sometimes it can take around five hours.  It's a fun game, but a serious time commitment so we didn't do much of anything else.

 The guy on the front of the box holding a cigar is just funny to me.

 I decided to take advantage of the quiet day at home and bake once the game was over.  I pretty much just don't bake.  My friend Becca posted this easy recipe for pumpkin spice muffins a while back.  I thought I could handle it because it's just a box of spice cake and canned pumpkin mixed together.  Overall the experience was easier than I usually come across in a baking situation, but even with this recipe I still had issues:
 1. The can of pumpkin I had was 29oz when I only needed the 15oz can.  I measured it out, but I couldn't figure out what to do with the remaining pumpkin.  I hate wasting food like that, but I have no idea what I would do with it so I threw it away.

 My leftovers.

2. This recipe makes 24 muffins.  I only have a small muffin pan for six.  There was a lot of unnecessary use of the oven because I had to keep refilling the stupid thing and baking the next batch.  I decided to cut it down by just making them bigger.  I was sure I would end up blowing it completely by doing this, but it actually worked out.

 Extra full muffins in the oven.

3. When I was spraying the muffin pan the oil dripped on my shoe.  Also, to be clear they were not actually my shoes.  I was wearing Jeremy's Pumas.  I tried to clean it off, but you can still see a big spot from it.
4. My husband doesn't like pumpkin flavored things.  I knew this when I started, but I really wanted to eat them so I made them anyway.  He did eat half of one and said it was pretty good so I have hope that I won't have to eat all of them by myself.

My finished muffins with lots of cream cheese frosting.  I guess that kind of makes them cupcakes.

They are really good, but I am such a pathetic baker.
-Kira