From my Christmas kitchen

Here’s a photo of some of the output from my Christmas kitchen this holiday season. I always have fun preparing my Christmas kitchen gifts for giving.

On the left are two of my mulled cider spice mixes. As I’ve detailed before here at my Christmas blog, I wrap the spices up in coffee filters and tie with string, then package in small paper bags with a sewn-on label. This year two of my granddaughters (ages 4 and 6) helped me put the spices in the filters, then helped me place the filters in the bags and position the labels for sewing. Highlight of this experience: they both gasped with delight at their first glimpse of my tomato pincushion filled with multicolored pins. “That is SO pretty!”

I made three kinds of loaves -- apricot cake, pumpkin butterscotch bread, and fruit bread -- and three kinds of fudge -- four-chip fudge, holiday fudge, and chocolate-peanut butter fudge. I wrapped my gift breads and fudge first in plastic wrap, then in foil, and lastly in this really nifty gift wrap for food. I don’t know if this stuff is even made any more, but it’s something I’ve hoarded for ages and never used. I decided that this year it was high time to use it . Then I tied each little package with a contrasting metallic cord or ribbon -- I buy such things for pennies at Walmart’s after-Christmas sales and then use them liberally the following year. It makes me feel rich to have such lovely things to use in wrapping my gifts for others.