Trimming the Tree

 It's Christmas time!!  I love Christmas.  I love decorating and the music and the family and the happy faces, but I don't like to rush it.  Let's give Thanksgiving its due.  There is no Christmas music in this house until the day after Thanksgiving and garland and trees are a big no-no.  We feel strongly about this can you tell?  Anyway-Thanksgiving is over and it is time for CHRISTMAS!!  YAY!!!

Last night it was time to trim the tree.  We love this night at our house.  We have a good snack supper and play Christmas music and decorate the tree.  We laughed last night because we found the ornament that says "Our First Christmas 1994."  That was the only ornamnet we had that year.  I spent about $10, which was just about all the extra cash we had, on red Christmas balls at Walmart so it would look a little better.   We had so many ornament last night there was no room left for balls!  I Love seeing all the ornaments from years past!

My kiddos love having supper in the den and something about it t feels all warm and cozy so here is what our snack supper looked like.

Little Smokies

 Kind of weird ingrediants but oh so good!  Always check your smokies to be sure they are GF.  The chili sauce and the jelly make a great sauce.  Just dump them in a sauce pan and heat it all up!  Yum!  I had a friend tell me once that that was wierd and couldn't you just use BBQ sauce.  Yes, yes you can.

Cheese Ball

 My son told me the other day that he loved Christmas.  "I'm so glad" I replied, "What do you love most?"  Cheeseball, he very quickly replied.  Well ok then.

The orginal recipe calls for 3 lbs of cream cheese.  Thats alot of cream cheese but it makes several balls and is great for party season.  I made a smaller version for us last night.

1 Lb of softened cream cheese.
About 1 1/2 cups of grated cheddar cheese (pre shredded worked fine-I was tired)
Several shakes of Worshestershire
Grated onion to taste

Mix it all together with your hands and form into a ball and sprinkle with paprika, or as my daughter says "the red sauce." Serve with Fritos Scoops.

 Cheese Rolls

 And for dessert

This was hard and time consuming.  GF oreos dipped in white chocolate and sprinkled with Christmas sprinkles.  Took like 3 minutes.  Ok 4, the chocolate had to melt in the microwave.  Awesome!  Festive, easy,  not "weird".  Hoorah!

The whole meal took less than 20 minutes to make.  I'm not saying it was especially balanced but it was a hit!

And the tree is trimmed.

Merry Christmas!