One year ago, I made cookies to take to a Christmas party.  I even wrapped up a white elephant gift for the same party.  And then I sat down on my couch and decided to stay home.  I also ate at least half of the cookies.

Today, I decided that if I was going to make it to the party this year, I would need to buy cookies instead of making them.

Enter my all-time favorite Christmas cookies:

They might look like weird chocolate hearts with sprinkles (which is kind of an American-ized version of the cookie, but whatever).  They aren’t.  They are actually like a gingerbread/spice cake center with a chocolate coating.  Genius combo.  They also usually have this strange paper-like layer on the bottom (entirely edible) that’s surprisingly awesome.  These are paperless, sprinkleful, but I still like them.

They’re officially called Lebkuchen, and they’re officially gingerbread, I suppose.  I really think they’re in a different category from gingerbread though.

Okay, so cookies.

You know what else is nice about today? Well, we have nice neighbors.  We’ve only met this couple two or three times.

Sometime last weekend was one of those meetings, and I mentioned in our Christmas-is-coming conversation that we used to be light in the ornaments department.  That isn’t so much true these days, but just the same, I found a box of very nice hand-me-down Christmas decorations on our porch the next day, complete with a note from our neighbors.  How nice is that?!

Our neighbors made me feel cared for.  That’s a pretty big deal to make a relative stranger feel cared for.

And last but not least, I’ll show you my shame.  We ran out of dog food this morning, so Peanut had a bowl full of treats for breakfast.

I think that’s the equivalent of feeding kids cake for breakfast.  At least he didn’t seem to mind!

So yes, today had some highs and lows (and featured hours and hours of me rushing around work trying not to look rushed).  All things told, I think it was a success.  I did make it to the party, after all.