This is our FIFTH Christmas in Albania! I can hardly believe that. That's long enough to develop some traditions that mark the time of year in meaningful ways and give us events with friends to anticipate.
Some traditions were not intentional but just become that thing you 'have' to do (in a good way) because that's what you have become known for -- like homemade Christmas cookies! In anticipation, this last summer we stocked up on some special goodies to bring back to Albania like sapphire sugar sprinkles and silver sanding sugar to give our treats that special unexpected sparkle.
This year our group of friends who helped us grew significantly -- and we were grateful for the help!
We serve these cookies after our Christmas program at church, as well as distribute small bags to our neighbors and dispense at kids club.
This year we made Christmas trees, stars, and snowflakes -- some for their symbolism and the snowflake because, well, it's just pretty and I wanted something blue to make our little collection more colorfull
Above, Nathan, Kimberli and Albania are adding a special marble technique on the stars with two colors of royal icing.
The Christmas trees used a ton of icing but Nathan made JUST enough!
Oh, and can I add here that since our first Christmas in 2013 you can now buy powdered sugar in Albania which makes it possible to even make icing? (We still bring over Karo syrup from the States for this particular recipe).
These were our only two helpers last year -- so glad they brought reinforcements in 2017 because we had more than 350 cookies to decorate!
We played lots of Christmas tunes through Alexa, which turned into an unexpected form of entertainment. We learned that Alexa does NOT speak Albanian, ha ha.a
Friends -- thank you SO much for all your help! We can't wait to share these in just a few days!
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