I’m kind of glad that I’ve waited this long to re-cap my Christmas festivities because I really just cannot bring myself to do all the “year in review” and “goals for 2012″ posts that show up this time of year. I definitely have some goals for next year and some exciting things on the horizon, but I’ll save those things for another day.

This Christmas we drove up to the Chattanooga area to spend Christmas Eve with Jeff’s family.

The tree at his Papaw’s house was knee-deep in presents!

They got passed out rather quickly with the help of two “Santas.” Do you guys do that in your family? Someone, usually one of the kids gets to “play Santa” and hand out all the presents!

And in Jeff’s family everyone takes turns opening gifts one by one, so we all get to see what each person got and take pictures easily.

And when it’s not your turn to open one you can take turns snapping photos of each other instead!

After about 2 hours of unwrapping gifts (yes it takes that long but it’s part of the fun) we went into the kitchen for dessert. I brought a carrot cake because Jeff recently mentioned to me that carrot cake was his favorite, so I just had to make it for him.

Not just any carrot cake though, this was a carrot cake with a clementine cream cheese frosting! It might just be the best thing I’ve ever baked.

It makes me so happy when people like things I’ve cooked or baked, and everyone definitely loved the cake.

After dessert we went back to Jeff’s parents house to spend the night so that we could leave from there to head to Hiawassee, GA the next morning. My Dad’s side of the family has moved up there in recent years and it’s a beautiful part of Georgia, even if it is 2 and a half hours away.

I was so done with snapping photos so I didn’t really take any that day except for this one of me and my Dad. Don’t we have the same eyes?

So you may have noticed that I haven’t told you what Jeff and I got for each other yet. We actually exchanged gifts the Friday before Christmas so that we’d have time to “play” with our new stuff before we had to head up to Chattanooga.

I sent Jeff down to the basement to open his since I’d been storing it down there.

It’s a home beer brewing kit! We’ll both enjoy that one!

He is so excited about it and has been spending the last week reading up on brewing techniques and shopping for the ingredients he’ll need to make his first batch!

He had also been dying for me to open his gift to me for all of December, and now I know why…

It’s a Cannon Rebel DSLR camera!!! Ahhhh!

I’ve been dying for a better camera for ages. I’m really starting to understand and enjoy photography and it was time to upgrade for sure. I absolutely love the Cannon PowerShot S90 Point and Shoot that I’ve been using for the last 2 years and I’ll definitely continue to use it, but a DSLR was necessary for me to be able to continue improving my photography skills and to take more professional quality photos.

It’s also going to be invaluable for a personal project I’ve been working on…….

Anyway, I hope your holiday season was wonderful too. See you all in the new year!

Hey everyone! Jeff and I are heading up to the Chattanooga area for round one of our Christmas festivities. I’m leaving you guys with this cute Christmas quiz I’ve seen around the blog world…

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Well, I hate egg nog, but your standard hot chocolate from a powder doesn’t cut it either. It’s gotta be real hot chocolate from melted shards of good quality chocolate shaved right off the bar. Nutella helps too.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? We always had the presents from Santa sitting out where we could see them as soon as we ran into the living room. Santa and his team are way too busy to wrap presents.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? When I was young we used the colored lights and covered every inch of the house with them. That was magical to me and definitely my preference. We did the white lights when I was older and it just didn’t feel Christmas-y.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nah, I can find plenty of good reasons to kiss my husband without it.

5. When do you hang your decorations up? I’m all for leaving the month of November for Thanksgiving, so when we decorate next year I’ll probably wait until the first week of December.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? I live for the stuffing! And a good sweet potato souffle with the brown sugar and pecan crumble topping.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? I remember one year my sister and I got bean bag chairs for Christmas. They were both wrapped in boxes bigger than we were and we spent the whole month of December trying to guess what was in them. The chairs were fun, but I think we had more fun playing in the empty boxes!

8. What is on your Christmas Wish list? Many things. You can always appease me with photography books and asian dishware.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We always got to open one gift each on Christmas Eve and it was usually pajamas. Anti-climactic.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? We’ll be decorating for the first time next year and I know for sure that I want all of our ornaments to be either handmade or deeply personal, so I’ll make enough to get it going and we’ll add to it every year when we have kids.

11. Snow? Love it or dread it? I love the stuff. Something happens to the air after a snowfall, it’s still and quiet and empty-feeling. I really like that. However, the sound of snow compacting under your winter boots is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

12. Real tree or fake tree? We always had real growing up and I do love the smell, but I think we’ll be going with a fake one to be more environmentally friendly and so that we don’t have to spend money on a new one every year. We might get a real tree once or twice just for fun.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? The first thing that popped into my head when I started thinking was a Caboodle makeup box that my aunt gave me as a young teen. Girls love boxes with lots of compartments.

14. What’s the most important thing about Christmas for you? Getting to see all of our family. Jeff and I are the only members of our families that live in Atlanta. His family is 2 hours north and mine is an hour+ south, so we can’t just pop over for tea whenever.

15. What is your favorite Holiday dessert? While I like all of the typical holiday desserts like pumpkin pie and pecan pie, none of them are really my favorites. I always want cake and there’s rarely cake.

16. What is your favorite tradition? We didn’t really have any traditions that I can think of. I would like to make handmade Christmas ornaments with our children every year when we’re parents though.

17. What tops your tree? I’ll probably make a fancy origami star.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I am not afraid to say that I really enjoy receiving! Who doesn’t like getting stuff? I do get a thrill though when I pick out a gift for someone that perfectly suits them and they’re really excited about.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?  I like the more solemn songs sung by a full choir, can’t think of the names though.

20. Candy canes, yuck or yum? I’m not really a huge peppermint fan but I don’t think they’re gross.

21. Favorite Christmas Movie? I have probably seen The Santa Clause 50 times. Tim Allen is my Santa.

22. What do you leave for Santa? I always left chocolate chip cookies. I think our future kids should leave a wedge of cake though.

23. Do you have a Christmas morning tradition? Not really. We always opened presents and ate sausage balls for breakfast and then hurried over to Granny’s to do it all over again.

24. Do you prefer to shop on-line or at the mall? I hate malls. Hate em’. We did about 80% of our shopping online this year and it was wonderful. I only had to step foot in a mall once.

25. Christmas letter or Christmas card?  I don’t think we’ll do either, I’ve never been a card person.

That was fun. Hope you all enjoy your holidays, talk to you afterwards!

All that’s left to share from last weekend is this incredible apple butter cake!

I love to bake, but ever since I started paying attention to eating mostly healthy foods I’ve tried to put aside that urge to make a batch of cookies every week. I have a huge folder full of bookmarked recipes for when I need a “fancy” dessert, if only I had enough occasions to make them all!

This is a cake that I heavily modified from another recipe. It’s so far changed from that “inspiration cake” though that I feel totally cool with posting it as my own recipe.

I love how damp the texture of this cake is. It reminds me of a really good banana bread. The frosting is a sweet contrast to the subtle cake flavor but it isn’t too crazy sweet either. The flavor of the cider is barely noticeable in it, it just adds a kind of fresh fruity crispness.

I ended up pawning the rest of the cake off on my mom and brother-in-law. If it had sat in my house any longer I would have undoubtedly eaten it all myself. I love sweets.

Speaking of sweets, today I’m baking up a carrot cake to take to Christmas Eve dinner with Jeff’s family. I’m adding some special signature touches to it, so I’ll be sure to share the recipe with you after the holidays. Hope yours are wonderful!