Christmas Dinner Ideas, Also Homeade Gifts

We do a Christmas Eve Party every year. Mostly desserts and appetizers. A big spiral cut ham served with cheese and homemade parker house rolls We eat the leftovers all day Christmas. To have a sit down dinner in the evening, we have the ham and dinner rolls, so all we really need is brocoli cheese and rice casserole, green bean casserole, and candied yams (all made ahead) We make Banana Nut Bread and have that warm with butter and coffee/hot chocolate for Christmas breakfast. The idea is to not cook or clean all day Christmas, just spend the day playing with new toys and loving on each other.

We tend to have either turkey or ham and lasagna or other pasta, green veggie salad, potato casserole or baby reds.

For breakfast, I would recommend Creme Brulee French toast. You can (and should!) prepare it the night before & just pop it in the oven in the morning. Soooooooo yummy! You'll love it. Here's the recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/creme-brulee-french-toast/de...

I'm a fan of chocolate covered pretzels. I imagine they are easy to make and would keep well.

My best recieved home made gift (that I made) was a 2 ringed binder, old fashioned looking recipe book. My Mom had passed away the year before and had what we called "The Chicken Book". Her's was a felt front and back covered one, with recipe cards in it, and a chicken patch on the cover. Ones from friends and church gals and the neighbor gals, etc. Many were recipes we all grew up with. So I photcopied a few of her handwritten ones onto cardstock, the size of the cards I made the new ones. I did felt sewn together with a layer of cardstock in between to make the covers sturdy. Everyones was personalized with iron on patches.

My brother is into photography...so his had a camera patch on it. My other brother fishes...so his was easy. Many of the gals just had cutesy girly things in colors or things I knew they would like. I made them for all of my siblings and adult nieces and nephews.

That was 3 years ago and I get calls about every month from someone asking about another "Gram" recipe for Russian Tea, Campers Cocoa or Ann's Mint Dessert! All faves we grew up with! They were easy to make, inexpensive and well recieved!

Have a fun holiday!

Breakfast we ALWAYS have sparkling apple cider and/or sparkling grape juice for the kids (and me. I love it better than champagne). The adults can make mamosas or have straight champagne. We always eat pigs in a blanket with various mustards and dipping sauces. Takes a few minutes to make, but they taste good even when they cool down. We eat those and open presents at the same time.

Dinner - we don't even really do Xmas dinner b/c we're normally with the in-laws or doing our own family thing. So for us, it's breakfast and presents at my mom and dads with my brothers and their wives and the neices and nephews.

I'd love to get a cookie mix. Get a jar or containerfrom the $1 store. Sounds cute/easy/fun/cheap.

I'm doing homemade sugar scrubs this year for family and teacher gifts! You can buy a glass container from the dollar store and mix up about 2 1/2 cups of sugar and several drops of your favorite fragrance oil or about 5 tbsp of lemon juice (lavender, mint, etc...) Put a pretty ribbon bow on it and voila! For Christmas breakfast, I always do an egg and sausage casserole that I make the day before and stick in the oven as soon as the kids wake up on Christmas day. Pair it with OJ and some coffee and we're set. PM me if you'd like the recipe!

Last year for tgiving my mom was in the hospital and I had to do it for the first time! I googled recipes and did all my sides in the crock pot. Between her and I, we had 4 and it was perfect. I recently cut and pasted some recipes I may want to try this year. You could use some for xmas too, message me your email address and I will send it to you.

I also have a bunch of recipes for homemade "flavored coffee creamers". You can buy containers at the dollar store. I can email that as well.

I don't have the recipe but you can google it: its super easy for breakfast, its like a dozen eggs, 10 pieces of bread torn up, milk, cheese, diced chilis are optional...you mix it all up, set it in fridge over night and bake it in the morning. serve it with salsa...yum.

Christmas dinner:
a baked ham or turkey (they feed more ppl)
mashed potatoes
baked rolls
green salad
vegetable tian (cheap, good, google Barefoot Contessa's recipe)

or a huge lasagna if you need to do it cheaper, garlic bread, green salad

Yummy punch for adults: frozen punch mix, gingerale, champagne &
a few scoops of rainbow sherbet

Desserts: cheesecake (purchase), mudd pie (easy to make)

Christmas Breakfast:
egg quiches (throw in oven in morning) or
a bit more work but still easy
scrambled eggs
sausages (easy & quick)
baked croissants (Pilsbury kind)
coffee, hot cocoa
christmas cookies

Gifts:
framed picture of your family w/homemade fudge (easy, quick)

or an ornament you buy then write on it your families name, year, in gold or silver pen write "Happy Holidays From Our Family" or "Christmas 2011" or "Love & Peace"

Our family always does lasagna. You can make it the day before and just pop it in the oven. You can have salad and garlic bread to go with it which are easy to throw together. We then just put out an assortment of christmas cookies everyone has made for dessert like "buckeyes"(peanut butter balls), sugar cookies, oreo truffles, I would keep going, but now I am drooling just thinking about it!! Enjoy getting ready for the Holidays!

We do brunch every year. The menu is quiche, muffins, fruit and some hot pastrami. I do 95% ahead of time, in the morning I heat up the quiches (you can serve them cold) and the pastrami.

Many years ago, we used to have the big family dinner at the inlaws, it was a nightmare. MIL and aunt were in the kitchen cooking, not with the family. The kids didn't want to seat through a long drawn out family meal. Clean up seemed to take forever, and who wants to clean after a big meal. So we stopped going for the meal. We ate a home and had a nice simple meal, for us it was about quality family time, not spending time in the kitchen cooking and then cleaning.