Merry Christmas!

Whatever is your religion or your believes, just wanted to thank you all my readers and wish you all health, happiness and prosperity! 

This is my simple with for you, from my family, to yours! 

Baking and cooking.

Christmas is around the corner and so the baking and cooking has started for me. 

For instance, the last day at work, I baked lasagnas for the teachers and personnel. 

But I didn't stop there, oh no! I baked a pumpkin pie (from scratch!) and brownies 

Made chocolate fudge for the first time!! Courtesy of a wonderful recipe that I found on pinterest HERE

 

YUM! Thumb print cookies! It took me 2 matches to make them right. Recipe HERE  

Chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies! Not as pretty as the one in this recipe but they sure are tasty! 

Chocolate dipped pretzels

And vanilla bark, happened actually by mistake but very good nonetheless!

Should I stop or keep going? 

What have you baked so far?? 

If nothing, tell me what you're eating will do! XO

Epiphany

Thought I'd share a little something that I miss from Italy tonight.
January 6th in Europe, we celebrate Epiphany.
This is a Cristian celebration, as Christmas is, in which we commemorate the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi.
In commercial words, this translate in exchanging of stockings full of sweets and chocolate, or charcoal if you've been naughty. Kinda like Americans, use to do for Christmas, but in Italy, we separated the 2 and I think it's kinda of nice, 'cause after all that Christmas is done and said, you're still something to look for, instead of being of lumped together.

Courtesy of torinosathomethefoodconnection.blogspot.com

The pagan symbol of this festivity it the Befana, that supposed to be a very old woman flying on a broom. She's pretty much the female figure of Santa Claus that delivers chocolates and small gifts.

The Epiphany is also last festive day of the holidays in Italy, which means most European places (schools and such) will reopen doors just tomorrow.

I used to be pretty good about eating my chocolates a little bit at the time during the whole year, looking forward to the next Epiphany. You can understand how much I'm bummed right now that in America there is no such thing.

I also thought this collection that I made around Christmas time, goes along pretty well with this post! Enjoy :)

Shocking Stockings

Curated By: Crochetedlitt...

ArtFire.com

Indie Design

Time to put your Christmas tree up!

I put it one up on this blog side bar (look there ---->)

But I will put one up in the house this Saturday.
In the meanwhile, enjoy these :)

Do you have your tree up yet?

Curated By: Crochetedlitt...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

Family pictures!

I really enjoyed the past holidays and it makes me a little sad that there are just few hours left!
Don't give me wrong, I'm more than happy to come back to the routine of every day, but man was so good the feeling to wake up in the morning knowing that you didn't have to hurry up and do chores.
But I also know that I'm lucky, for many people holidays means more stress. I guess I built my relaxing niche in my home!
Look how much fun we had:

And thanks for everyone for entering my giveaway!!! So many entries so quickly, really warmed my heart!