It is almost time for one of our favorite community events – the 14th Annual Holiday Open House! That’s right – 14th – who can believe that we have been doing this for that long? Our Open House has become a holiday tradition for so many members of our community. It honestly doesn’t feel like the holidays have begun until our friends come up the mountain to spend time together, and of course, to visit with Santa and keep him up to date on our wish lists!
This year’s Open House will be on Saturday, December 7th, from 3 to 8. So much preparation goes into this event. We are so excited to have the blog to share a glimpse of the behind the scenes details with you!
First, we want to share the line up of local Frederick musicians that our good friend Todd Walker has arranged for our enjoyment: Kevin Neidig, Brett Barry, Brian Derek, Windon & Ricker, and maybe Todd himself!! These friends will play for 45 minute sets so we have a chance to enjoy fantastic music all afternoon.
Our most important guest of the day will be Santa himself. His schedule has him arriving on Catoctin Mountain around 4 p.m. and we hope he will visit for a few hours!! Set your alarm on your iPhone so you don’t miss him!!
Finally, we wanted to talk about the most delicious aspect of the Holiday Open House — the cookies! For the past few years, we have asked members of our community to bring their favorite cookie recipe with them – not just the recipe, but a few dozen of the cookies themselves! Our serving tables get laden down with the most tantalizing display of holiday sweetness you have ever seen! You can stuff yourself into holiday dessert utopia at those serving tables! It is splendid. We also love the sense of community that the sharing of the cookies supports. It reminds us of community gatherings of old – where everyone brought their showcase recipe to share with their neighbors – when we see the friends of 
ThorpeWood come through those doors bearing platters and containers full of cookies!
This year, we are asking you to bring those wonderful cookies to share, and to bring a copy of the recipe as well. Last year’s recipes have been bound and will be available for guests to purchase for a small price…we’ll collect this year’s and do the same at next year’s Open House! You know you want to dust off those classic family recipes and share your culinary prowess with our ThorpeWood community. The picture in this post is of real cookies shared at last year’s Open House – doesn’t it make you want to get in that kitchen and start baking?!?
So, start combing through those recipe boxes now! December 7th isn’t that far away! We can’t wait to kick off the holidays with you and your families. And, keep an eye on the ThorpeWood blog for more details about the Holiday Open House. The cookies were just the beginning!