This week on Catching up with the Kelnhofers, we’re talking about holiday baking. And I’m sharing a great find from Wal-mart!
It’s Christmas cookie season, and this year we’re ALL in on the baking. We’re planning to do lots of cookie baking as a family and we’re starting to think about Christmas cookie boxes!!

If you’re looking for some great holiday baking ideas, check out some of my favorites below:
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- Peanut brittle – you don’t even need a candy thermometer for this!
- Sugar cookies that hold shape – the best, classic, sugar cookie recipe that you can decorate for days with the kiddos!
- Sea salt turtle cups – I’ve been making these for years in our family cookie tins.
- Gingerbread cut out cookies – a mild flavor and great to bake with kids
- Eggnog Christmas cookies – great for the Christmas season!
- If you need more inspiration, you can find it here and here.
This year, we put together an amazing Holiday Entertaining Cookbook and you can still get a digital copy here. This is packed full of great recipes to make all holiday season long!
Sharing the latest posts up on Sweetphi.com.

- Christmas Traditions – sharing some of our memories that we create every year at the holidays.
- Meal Plan – 5 days of recipes, with an easy-to-make grocery list and rom for leftovers.
- Gingerbread Cut Out Cookies – a subtle ginger flavor and fun with cookie cutters! Great to make with kids in the kitchen.
- Seasonal Snack Mix – use red and green M&Ms for a festive take on this dish.
- Love List – the SweetPhi team shares fun finds from around the web
- Christmas cookie roundup – sharing classic cookie recipes from SweetPhi and other bloggers from around the web
- I like to make this cheesy jalapeño pull apart bread to go with soups (like this lentil soup or chili con carne or vegetarian chili)

And if you’re looking for some great holiday recipe inspiration, be sure to check them all out here. You can find this link directly on the sidebar of my website.
I’m all about Christmas cookies right now, so reading this comment only my sugar cookies recipe made my day:
- “Love this recipe! Have tried variations for years on my sugar cookies to get them to hold their shape, including refrigerating the cut cookies before baking, but none of them did the trick. Tried googling “hold their shape sugar cookies” and your recipe popped up. I loved the addition of the lemon zest and also the fact that the cookie is not super sweet, since I make buttercream icing to decorate them. Baking them for 10-11 minutes until the bottoms barely started to brown resulted in a softer chewy cookie. One variation I did was rather than putting the cut cookies in the freezer for 10 minutes, I left them in the fridge overnight. I stored them on a small cookie sheet between sheets of parchment paper and put the whole thing in a large ziploc bag so they wouldn’t dry out, as I didn’t want to bake them until the next day. It worked great. Thanks again for posting this recipe – I will be using it whenever I make cut out cookies!”
How great do these sea salt turtle cups look!? As always, thanks for sending in your reader recreations!
If you’re cooking this holiday season, I’d love to see what you’re making!
- Last year the best Christmas gift I got was from Nick, it was for this Electric Kettle . I still use it every day, I make my French press coffee recipe in the mornings and tea in the afternoons. This kettle though…a year later and I’m still in love. It has settings for French Press and for Green and Black Tea. It’s incredible.

- Such a cute read for the cozy winter holiday season: Eight Perfect Hours “In this romantic and heartwarming novel, two strangers meet in chance circumstances during a blizzard and spend one perfect evening together, thinking they’ll never see each other again. But fate seems to have different plans. From the acclaimed author of the “swoon-worthy…rom-com Lia Louis”

- Nick’s work had their amazing annual Christmas party for families- it was a lights display drive through, the kids got a cookie and we had so much fun looking at the lights!
- We made a “winter wonderland” to play with his sensory kit which Santa got him last year- he’s played with it all year!! The snow is just baking soda!!
- The kids got a little craft in their advent calendar and painted bright and early!
- St. Nicks came on Dec 6th, the kids got jammies and kinetic sand and Frankie got a new dress she demanded to wear over her pjs lol
- A super kind blog reader sent me the most beautiful and thoughtful ornament! It is front and center on our tree!
- My mother in law made us my favorite meal she cooks – lamb meatballs with yogurt sauce
- Me and my snuggle bug!!
Have you had a chance to check out all of our gift guides? If you’re running low on ideas, I’ve got ya covered with some great ones below:
- Ultimate gift guide for under $50
- Best gift ideas for Toddlers
- Gift options for beauty lovers
- Gifts for Her
- Gifts for Him
- My Favorite Cookbooks
You can always shop all of our gift guides plus plenty more ideas here!
EAT
- This seasonal snack mix would be great for holiday movie watching!

WATCH
- It was actually my husband Nick who found this awesome list of 2021 Intriguing Holiday Movies and we’ve already seen a few of them on Netflix, like Love Hard, The Princess Switch 3 (I mean, when you’ve seen the first two you just have to see the third, right?) and A Castle For Christmas.
- Also…how did I miss THIS gem – Rob Lowe is in it?!! It’s a cheesy Christmas Netflix movie, but I was still very surprised that they got him and Kristin Davis
PURCHASE
- Walmart is really stepping up their fashion/clothes game – I went there to get some Advent Calendar stuff (I also bought some Instant dry milk to make my hot cocoa mix) and came across this super cute sweater, soft and in different colors, and only $16!

Do you watch any Christmas movies? I’d love to hear from you – let me know if you have a favorite, just leave a comment below and let me know!
P.S. Cookbooks always make a great gift…
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