Some of my favorite times of year span from the beginning of November through the end of December, when everyone starts to prepare for the holidays.

String lights begin popping up, hanging from the eves of every home in the neighborhood. Stores break out their Christmas trees and the air has that special feeling only found during the last two months of the year. 

A lot of people like to wait until after Thanksgiving to start decorating and preparing for Christmas, but I am not one of those people. 

As soon as Halloween was over, my roommates and I broke out all of our Christmas decorations. Let’s just say my apartment looked like Christmas vomited glitter over every inch of free space. 

My love for the holiday season doesn’t stop with decorating.

One of my favorite traditions of the holiday season is baking Christmas cookies for my friends and family.

Over the years I have developed a list of all of my favorite types of Christmas cookies to make full of all the frosting, sprinkles and chocolate you could ever dream of.

However, this Christmas I’m going to be trying something different with my cookies.

Starting off strong is a cookie most families have in their Christmas cookie roster: sugar cookies.

Almost everyone knows how to make sugar cookies with Christmas themed cutouts and layers of colorful frosting topped with decorative sprinkles. 

This year, however, I’m going to be trying something different with my sugar cookies. I’m going to be making the frosting from scratch.

While this idea might not be new to some, this is a first for me that all started with Walmart being sold out of food coloring and vanilla frosting.

One trip to Pinterest later and I find myself buying all of the ingredients for the homemade frosting. So, if my sugar cookies this year come out a little bit wonky, know it is because I completely messed up the frosting.

Other than my new frosting experience, I am also adding a new type of cookie to my roster: peanut butter chocolate chip cookies with holiday M&Ms and sprinkles in them. 

Trust me, I know these cookies sound like a lot, but I think they also sound amazingly delicious.

I got the idea for these cookies while talking to my parents about what kinds of cookies we wanted to make this year. 

My parents always beg me to make my chocolate chip cookies, but my brothers really love peanut butter cookies and I wanted to do something more festive.

And the idea for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies with M&Ms and sprinkles was born.

To make these cookies, I am planning on using a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe I found on Pinterest, but instead of using a full bag of chocolate chips, I am going to use half a bag combined with half a bag of holiday M&Ms.

I am very excited to see how these cookies turn out, and hopefully I will have a new favorite cookie to add to my Christmas cookie list.

Smith can be reached at Smithcj6[email protected].