Made With Love By Talented Hands

I attended a holiday craft bazaar and bake sale at our local hospital today and, as always, was impressed with the generous sharing of people's talents.  I looked with awe and appreciation at each handmade item, thinking about the time and talent that it took to make such beautiful creations.  The women on my mother's side of the family have all been very skilled with their hands.  If you were to have put them all in a room together and encouraged them to work on their latest projects, you would have found my maternal grandmother, mother, aunt and cousins all displaying their creativity in myriad ways.  I, however, would have sat there with idle hands, wishing I had been born with the inclination and interest in such things.  Instead, I would've grabbed the closest book and stuck my nose in it, or I would've looked out the window, or I would've taken a walk.  The same thing is true with baking.  I'm an everyday type of baker (the few times I bother to do so, that is -- my husband and I lean toward a healthy diet with few sweets).  My maternal grandmother, aunt and cousin Amy could bake circles around me.  I knew it was Christmas, for instance, when entering my grandparents' house because it would smell of mouth-watering, commingled aromas of holiday baked treats.  Grandma Carrie would have made a holiday stollen decorated with white icing and candied green and red cherries for our breakfast.  She would have baked a wide array of Christmas cookies, with each variety housed in its own large coffee can in a corner of the kitchen.  My favorites were the Russian Tea Cakes.  I asked for them one year as the only Christmas present I wanted from Grandma and Grandpa!  As the holidays approach, I think of all of those wonderful women in my family who have brought so much beauty to my life through their loving hearts and talented hands.