Free At Last!

Do you know what this is? This is our holiday baking. Finished. You have no idea how beautiful this is to me.

We've spent the last two weeks making this stuff, and now we can cross it off our lists. Yay!

We made 40 buckets to pass out, and sorry Mom, but we don't ship. This is just for the locals.

This is Peanut Head's Martha Stewart bench in his Martha Stewart garage, laden with the goodies from our labor.

It gets reeeeeeeal cold here in Idaho, and in the winter our garage serves as an extra freezer for our holiday baking.

I made a little key to tape on the underside of the lids to the treat buckets. Just in case anyone wants to know what they're eating.

Some of these recipes are posted on my blog already, and the rest I'm going to try real hard to get posted over the next week.

I don't want to make y'all sick though, with tales of our treats day after day after day. I'm real sorry about the deluge of recipes, and from here on out, I won't let it happen again.

This is my first holiday season in the blogosphere, and I compulsively wanted to get this whole process documented.

I'll try to limit myself to one recipe a week after all these are posted. But for right now, this joyous holiday season, it's raining bad-for-you recipes. I'm so sorry.

We made a total of nine different treats for the buckets, and here they are in no specific order:

First up is the Pecan Molasses Toffee, the first holiday recipe I posted a little over a week ago.

These are the Star Cookies.

These are Buckeyes.

This is the Cranberry White Chocolate Bark, one of the easier recipes to make, and the one I can't seem to stop eating.

Can you tell I'm loving the macro setting on my camera? Those little sugar crystals look like freaky food colored ice bergs.

These sweet treats are Peanut Head's White Chocolate Coconut Clusters.

Ah, the Frying Pan Cookies. Yum.

White Chocolate Egg Nog Fudge--can't stop eating this either.

Chocolate Mint Truffles, the other super easy recipe.

And finally, the Gingerbread Snowflakes. The icing on the treat buckets.

This is what everything looked like jammed in the little buckets. I could just dive right in and not come out until New Year's.

I'm so glad these will be gone in a couple days.

And here they sit on Peanut Martha Stewart Head's bench, awaiting delivery.

I love this day, when the treats are done and we're ready to spread the baking love.