our Christmas tree

This year (really the past few months) has been full of firsts since I've moved to Cambridge. One among them is my first real Christmas tree. At the small fruit stand outside of downtown crossing, we bought a tree from a Jewish man and brought it home on the t.

All of the ornaments and garland are homemade and food related, which feels quite fitting.


Here is a montage of how we made the cinnamon-applesauce ornaments, the same technique Krystal and I made at a cooking class in Salt Lake City several years ago.

The ingredients. We followed the recipe on the McCormick website, and added a dallop of glue.

The cookie cutters. We made a special trip to target for these beauties.

Mr. P mixing the dough. It smells so good! And kept the apartment smelling that way for the next week.

Rolling the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. I don't have a rolling pin, so we improvised with a bottle of tequila.

Cutting the "cookies." Pro-tip: we used a drinking straw to make the hole for ribbon.

And they're reading for the oven. Two and a half hours at 200F.

I was so excited by these, that we segued straight into salt dough ornaments. The white snowflakes turned out beautifully, but we had a bit more trouble with the red. I forgot the step in the recipe which seals in the color (spray them with cooking spray), and we ran out of non-stick cookie sheets. They are still on the pan (several days later).