Holiday cooking extravaganza!

People always talk about how all they do around the holidays is cook...well, I got to experience that for the first time this year. Partially just because I wanted to. :-)

Kody and I spent our first Christmas together "alone," aka we were in Chicago, while my family was all in Omaha and Kody's family was with their other families. It ended up being pretty fun, but I'm not sure if I'd vote to do it again!

I tried to come up with a few things to make it more special, so we had plans for attending the Christmas Eve service, eating chili and opening presents on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day consisted of a yummy, homemade breakfast and then supposedly going to the local homeless shelter/soup kitchen and serving brunch there.

The delicious homemade Pioneer Woman cinnamon rolls that were so easy and so good! We enjoyed those on Christmas morning and the many mornings after.

A slightly undercooked egg casserole, but it still tasted pretty good! The recipe came from the cookbook my mom and mother-in-law made me for a wedding gift. This was Marla's Overnight Egg Casserole.

I made two plates of tortilla pinwheels, recipe courtesy of my Aunt Lynette.

Lots of cinnamon rolls! One pan for us, one for the homeless shelter and one we took to Omaha.

Pumpkin dinner rolls that were really good fresh, but not so hot after about a week. I definitely think I'll try making them again, but I'll make sure to serve them fresh.

Our Christmas morning breakfast consisted of an egg casserole and cinnamon rolls, and we took another casserole, cinnamon rolls, the tortilla pinwheels and most of the pumpkin dinner rolls to the homeless shelter. Unfortunately, the brunch ended up being a "community brunch" with lots of community members we didn't know and no homeless/needy people to serve and talk to. So...we dropped off our food and headed home! I still feel really bad that we didn't stay, but it was fun to spend the afternoon watching movies and playing games.