No Christmas Cookie Zone

Part of my Christmas decorating over-doing-it involves making a ginger bread house.  This is an activity that Carter also likes to join in on so we usually end up with at least two houses.  Since Carter turns 15 tomorrow she has been spending her precious free time studying her drivers ed book in preparation for taking her learners permit test.  I finally got tired of waiting for her and went ahead and made one house myself today.

I did not want to be tempted by baking gingerbread so I took the cheaters way out and used my plastic house as the base.  I employed those hard store bought ginger snaps as the covering of my house.  I am a soft cookie kind of girl so I was not enticed to nibble on my building materials.

I purposely bought candies to decorate with that are not my favorite, starlight mints, spiced gum drops and mint M&M’s.  Now I normally would have some trouble with an open bag of M&M’s but the combination odors of ginger snaps and mint is down right disgusting.  This was not something I planned.  I bought the mint M&M’s because they came in three shades of green.

Leaving many of the candies that hold allure to my mouth as well as my gingerbread house-decorating gene on the store shelves made creating a sugar dream hard.  The house is not my best looking, but it was my lowest caloric gingerbread house ever at zero.  In the end that makes it a winner in my eyes.

Abstaining is the only way I can deal with holiday goodies.  I am thankful that my friend Carol has a no-cookie option at her annual cookie swap.  The people who come to her house go all out in their creations of delicious cookies.   The problem with cookie swaps is I want to taste each type of cookie I get and since you only get three of 30 different cookies that is a lot of tastes.

Even if I bring the cookies home and put them right in the freezer they are not safe from me.  It is amazing how good frozen cookies are.  So holiday baking is out as well as holiday candy making.  Skipping the sweets and keeping my mouth sugar free will not ruin my holiday like gaining holiday pounds would.