Merry Christmas from The Nut-Free Mom!

I thought now would be a good time to provide a link to a holiday party tips post that I offered on the blog last year at this time. Please take a look before you go to another Christmas party! When you know what to look out for, it's a lot more fun to attend.

Also, I wanted to wish all of you a Merry Christmas! When you're dealing with nut allergies, it can sometimes seem like the holidays are all about avoiding foods and not what you can have. While baking gingerbread people with the kids yesterday, I realized that food allergies provide unexpected ways of offering bonding experiences and a healthier, simpler approach to eating.

For example, we can't just run out and buy cookie dough at the store. So cookies are a treat around here and that makes the whole thing more special to my kids (though I confess that I do try to bake safe treats for them on a pretty regular basis. They're definitely not deprived.) :)My kids and I ended up really enjoying the whole process of baking and decorating gingerbread cookies from scratch. We are also lucky to have been able to buy some "safe" candy for decorating but we are still limited a bit in what we can use. The girls ended up using lots of creativity and their cookies looked great.

So when you're going about your holiday celebrating with nut allergies, realize that even though finding safe foods can be tough at this time of year, the process of making food together really is a blessing in disguise. Making cookies is time-consuming so it helped us to slow down as a group until the job was done. There is so much go-go-go all year long--I for one enjoyed being "stuck in the house" with our cookie project. I'll always remember this stuff and I hope my girls do as well!

Happy, healthy, nut-free holidays everyone!