Christmas Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you want an easy delicious cookie recipe for holiday gatherings, this is your cookie! I made this recipe myself because I didn’t want the more labor intensive version with all the flour and oatmeal and I wanted a quicker version without losing any of the cranberry taste. This cookie looks and tastes homemade from scratch. 

INSTRUCTIONS:

1 17.5 ounce Package of Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix – mix according to directions which include adding egg and butter.

Add to cookie mixture:

¾ to 1 cup dried cranberries

¾ to 1 cup white chocolate chips

Bake according to directions on package.

Recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies.

 

Due to Thanksgiving I will be taking off the rest of this week, but here is what is coming up next week at Christmas on Memory Lane:

Christmas Caroling - a tender memory of my sister Donna and brother-in-law Dewayne, and A Song in Her Heart - a Women's Class Christmas party was a reminder that some people are going through difficult times at Christmas and need our encouragement. 

 

 

The 90 devotions in First Breath of Morning emphasize building our relationship with God through drawing near and strengthening our faith as we grow a deeper walk with Him.

The 60 devotions in CLAY reveal more clearly how our relationship with God is lived out as we grow and are changed by Him through His work in our lives and our circumstances. 

Click book covers to go to each book's Amazon page. 

Maybe there is someone on your Christmas list this year that would enjoy an uplifting and faith-filled devotional!

The Snowflake Ornament

Today's story about a unique Christmas ornament is quite a different story than the Porky Pig ornament in The Door Prize from the previous post in the Christmas on Memory Lane series. 

I was my sister’s helper in her Wednesday night class at church which was a group of middle school girls. I loved that Donna asked me to help.  That was in the early 1980’s and I was in my early twenties. She was seven years older than me and I greatly looked up to her and I loved helping her with this class that meant so much to her.

At the class Christmas party I was given a gift from the girls and it was this snowflake ornament - and I am almost certain it was a Hallmark ornament although the box was lost a long, long time ago.

It has been a tradition over the past years to put the snowflake ornament on the tree first before anything else goes on. It is my oldest ornament and it is special to me. A couple Christmases ago my two daughters and a friend picked out a real tree for us, set it up, put on the lights and were getting ready to put on the ornaments. Earlier, I had laid the snowflake ornament on the dining room table and said, “No ornaments go on the tree until after this goes on!”

But, then they sent me to pick up our Papa Murphy’s Pizza and I made the drive, picked it up, came back to the house expecting the tree to be decorated and saw that there was not one ornament on the tree. I was shocked. These are people that love to put ornaments on the Christmas tree! And they hadn’t touched one ornament in all the storage containers.

The snowflake ornament was still where I left it on the dining room table. They thought I wanted to be the one to put it on the tree, so they waited.

I placed my treasure on the tree, watched it sway ever so little and make the soft tingling sound the snowflake chimes make as they move ever so lightly.

Then the rush was on. All the ornaments seemed to fly onto the tree at the hands of eager decorators, as it should be. And when they finished, the delicious pizza came out of the oven and the rush was on to eat their favorite pizza.

The snowflake ornament isn’t the most beautiful or most expensive ornament on the tree. But it is my oldest ornament and now that my sister and her husband have both gone home to be with the Lord, the special memory of this gift from being her helper in the Wednesday night class has become even more precious to me.

The Door Prize

I won a door prize at a Hallmark Store Open House one year when my children were young and we would go to the neighborhood Hallmark store and see what refreshments they had and look at all the ornaments and Christmas items. This was in Houston, which you can imagine, was still very warm in mid-November when these open houses are held. They would turn the ac down real low just to make it cool enough so people would drink the apple cider on a warm and muggy south Texas day.  

And, yes, one year I won a door prize, which was a Porky Pig ornament from the Looney Tunes Collection. The ladies in the store were surprised I wasn’t super thrilled at my win. I just didn’t find a pig dressed in a night shirt with his curly tail protruding beneath it a cute ornament, especially when they had at least a dozen other ornaments I would love to have. I just didn’t think that was going to look very Christmas-y on our tree. Compared to all my other ornaments, it would seem out of place, out of character from anything else on the tree.

I asked the lady overseeing the prizes would it be possible for me to trade Porky Pig for a different ornament for my door prize? She looked insulted and shocked that I was not tickled pink (like Porky Pig’s skin?) over my prize. I think she was even disgusted with me for not wanting to own this Porky Pig ornament. Did I say he is holding a plate of cookies? That part is very cute. And donning an adorable night cap? As soon as the question was out, I regretted asking and wished I had held my tongue. I shopped often at this store and I had lowered myself in their eyes. I was not pleased with the ornament selection they had chosen for the door prize. This was something they obviously could not comprehend. No one else that won a Porky Pig ornament that day asked to trade it for another ornament.

It was 1993 when this little ornament came home with me. The first year, Porky Pig was very reluctantly placed in an inconspicuous spot on our Christmas tree. And the second year, and the third year, until eventually, the little pig in the blue shirt with the curly tail, holding the plate of cookies started to grow on me. I wasn’t exactly becoming overly fond of the ornament, but I didn’t feel the need to hide it so far back in the tree. Porky is not on my favorite ornament list, but he is genuinely welcomed each year when the ornaments are unpacked and unwrapped and placed on the tree. I guess even a cute pig can grow on a person, especially at Christmas.

Do you have a peculiar ornament on your tree that had to grow on you?

 

Just a quick reminder that devotional books make great Christmas gifts!

At the end of this year that has been most challenging with the pandemic, I think these books are good for the heart that needs refreshed with reminders of God’s goodness in our every day lives.

The 90 devotions in First Breath of Morning emphasize building our relationship with God through drawing near and strengthening our faith as we grow a deeper walk with Him.

The 60 devotions in CLAY reveal more clearly how our relationship with God is lived out as we grow and are changed by Him through His work in our lives and our circumstances. 

Click titles to go to each book's Amazon page.  

 I hope you are enjoying Christmas on Memory Lane and inviting others to read along!