Christmas Prep

Today is Christmas at my mom's, tomorrow my dad & family come over to my place. I still need to wrap the presents for my mom's. For tomorrow... I've accomplished a lot, but still could do (and will be doing) a lot more. My bedroom (a room that no one will be in, but was the easiest to clean) is spic and span (okay, you can probably find some more dust hiding in a few places, but it's pretty good... I dusted the surfaces and swept and mopped!)... the living room has been (mostly) tidied, but still is filthy... the bathroom is okay, but could use a more thorough cleaning than it has... the kitchen has gotten better, and worse (I dealt with the stuff-in-progress on the table, but then I baked... so I really need to do dishes, clean the counters, and sweep and mop the floor)... the office is a disaster zone (it has a door)... the hallway, well, it still has two large desk pieces in it, and a colony of small dust bunnies, grit, and the cleaning supplies that I've been using. (Did you survive that mess of punctuation abuse?)

Anyway, here's something that turned out perfectly:

(Well, I haven't tasted it yet, but this is my third time making it, so I'm pretty confident.)

Here's the walnut roll that I'm really unsure about:

The dough the recipe called for left out something... there wasn't nearly enough liquid. I added enough water to make it kneadable, but... it didn't rise. It was a dense lump. (I think it needed more liquid.) So I used a dough recipe from a different dessert bread... but it said to mix the yeast with the flour, and a lot of the little yeast capsules were still visible as such the whole process through. It looks like it worked (ignoring the yeast spots), so I think, as long as it baked all the way through, it'll be at least edible. (Although possibly not enough like my grandma's.)

Then, there are these:

which have been prepared, and will be put in the oven when my family comes over. I've never made these before, but they *look* tasty. (Recipe here.) I have the whole thing covered with foil... hopefully they won't dry out or something before tomorrow evening. (All this prep was done last night.)

By the time all this was done, it was *late*, and I couldn't face the dishes. (My bandaged finger had spent enough time being soggy, and I was tired.) If I don't get to them before I head over to mom's, they'll still be there when I get back. They *will* be done before tomorrow. (The rest of the cleaning that I had planned to do? Some, but not all, will get done too.)