I love Christmas baking specifically making cookies. Over the past few years I have taken my favorite flavors of the season and experimented, adapted, and adjusted recipes.

My cookie baking  morphed from a few cookies for friends and family to filling plates for parties, mugs for co-workers, and piles of Christmas tins.

I love the whole process from planning out the ingredient list, to choosing tins for each family member or friend, to scooping, dipping, and decorating each cookie, to arranging them in tins.

The past two years we have also hosted a Cookie and Cocoa Christmas party.   It’s wonderful to have the chance to open our home and give warm holiday wishes to our fiends before we all get busy with the holiday schedule.

We have hot water for cocoa, cider, tea, we serve coffee. But the last two years L has also made homemade eggnog . We try to balance the sugar with some chips, dip, and fruit.

Here are the stars of the party. This year’s Christmas cookies.

By making this party an open house, we get a chance to spend a few minutes with each family. This year in addition to a Christmas moving playing in the family room, we added a few more children’s activities as well.

We had a gingerbread man decorating station, coloring your own cocoa mug or sugar cookies, and playing with gingerbread play dough.

We put out a few other toys such as foam blocks, coloring books and activity books, card games, and tic tac toe and checkers boards as well. Adding the children’s activities meant that the children were happily occupied and the adults felt free to enjoy their conversations and cocoa while it was still hot.

We had a great turn out this year, had some great conversations, and loved watching the children play. Most families came by in between other holiday events so everyone was dressed in wonderful festive outfits. It was a awesome way to begin the holiday season.

How do you celebrate the holiday season? What parties do you go to or host this time of year?