MomDot Day 6- Favorite Holiday Memory

This one is hard.

We would like to know what is your favorite holiday memory from your childhood.

There are so many memories that I absolutely love and cherish.  I’ll choose one to focus on.  It is perhaps one of my earliest memories of Christmas.  

When I was little Downtown Columbus was abuzz.  I remember people would drive and walk down there just to see all the pretty decorations and store windows.  There was a huge Lazarus department store there (pretty comparable to what Macy’s has become, in fact, I believe they all became Macy’s)  It was 5 stories and the street level windows were absolutely beautiful to little wide-eyed children like me.  We would make a day out of going down there and visiting THE REAL santa.

To see santa there was of course a long line.  To ease the difficulty of the line the store would make it more of a maze where kids could sit at different stations and draw crafts, like paper ornaments.  The Santa would be in a room at the end of the line and when you got close enough you could see him through the window.  I always thought it strange that there were 2 Santas in 2 different rooms that people would funnel in.  The challenge was simply to pick THE REAL one, which of course we always did.

After we finally saw Santa and gave him our many Christmas requests we would go to a part in the store that only little kids had access too.  The doors were half the height of normal doors and we would go in without our parents.  My parents would give us each money to buy the a Christmas present and we would go in and ask which row we could choose a present from (depending on the amount of money we had).  I remember distinctly picking out cologne in the shape of an old fashioned figure (maybe english army man?) for my dad.  We would go pay for the item and then they would wrap it for us so that our parents would not see.

The year my we got the cologne my brother ruined the surprise by giving my dad a big hint.  He said, “It starts with Old Sp—”.  Dad pretended not to know.  

I wonder why there aren’t more of these type of situations anymore.  At least not where we live.  It would be such a wonderful thing to take my children too.  Oh well.

MomDot Blog Party Day 4- What is your favorite Holiday recipe?

What is your favorite Holiday Christmas recipe?

Probably Hands down Peppermint Dreams.  Don’t be fooled by the name though.  There is a hint of peppermint, but it’s balanced perfectly so as not to be too minty.  I wish I had a picture!

4 egg whites
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 c. sugar
1 12oz package of chocolate chips
1/2 tsp peppermint extract

Wip egg whites to foam.
Add salt and cream of tartar.
Beat till stiff but not dry.
Add sugar 2T at a time
Fold in chips and extract
Drop by tsp. on heavy paper. (brown paper bags work best)
bake 25 minutes at 300 degrees.
remove while still slightly warm.

This recipe is very temperamental. Do not cook on a moist day or when you have run the dishwasher!