christmas cookies #1

For deena's wedding, we'll be farming out most of the food duties to people. A couple of people make some pots of soup, a couple of people each bring a batch of cookies, etc.
I'll be making the cakes, carrot soup, and some sort of spice cookies. Deena wanted Speculatius, which are crisp store-bought spicy cookies shaped like windmills. we can't find any here that aren't chocolate covered, or have almonds in them, or that just plain don't taste right. So, I'll be trying to find some sort of gingerbread-cookie type thing that will fill the gap. I know there are plenty of speculatius recipes out there, but I'd rather not pretend that I'm going for the real thing. I'm just going to look for something full of spices, and soft and molassesy, and then use these lovely cookie cutters that Mark's mother bought me. Maybe a little bit of white icing piped on in cute designs

I'm going to try a few recipes out before the big day, just to make sure I end up with the perfect taste. First up: Ginger Cookies, from Kirsten's Cookbook.

I probably haven't cracked open this book since 1997, and I know I only made these cookies once, because my parents had to import molasses from Egypt, and brown sugar was a thing of dreams. I'm kind of excited.

You'll notice the emblem on the back of the book that shows that this was published back when the  American Girls were owned by a lovely little company called "Pleasant Company", started by a lady named Pleasant T. Rowling. There were only 4 dolls when I first got mine: Felicity, Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly, while Addy, and then Josephine were added a year or two later. They cost 82 dollars. A few years later it was sold to Mattel, and they changed the brand to the American Girl Company. I've never been sure how I feel about that.

Christmas Ornaments

A few years ago when I was home for Christmas, I was helping my mother pack up the ornaments, and she was letting me pick some ornaments to take with me, and I found that one of my favorite ornaments was really coming apart. It was made of a detergent scoop that had a bit of fake snow and a glitter lake glued on the bottom, as well as some pipe-cleaner trees. A tiny wooden skater and snowman  enjoyed the space quite comfortably, but detergent scoops aren't meant to last twenty years, so I took the poor skater and snowman home with me to wait a new detergent scoop.

Well, it turns out American detergent is liquid, so I just tied a thread around each while I waited for something better. Well, they have lovely little paper-mache ornaments at Paper Source, for a dollar fifty, so I've picked one up, and by Christmas they should have a  lovely new lake to skate on.

We'll see how it goes!

Good Idea # 37

My mom started a few basil plants this summer in her garden, and when I went to visit a few weeks ago, they had become giant bushes, and since there was a danger of frost that night, I took home a huge container of leaves.
I've already got lots of pesto made up in my ice-cube trays, but I didn't have room for more, so I reused my jelly jars. They're lined with sandwich baggies, so that once they freeze, I can take the jars back, and use the jars again for other things. It is important that they are jelly jars, because they have the wide mouths, otherwise you won't be able to remove the pesto easily.

halloween projects

So if you hadn't guess it from the previous post, mark is thinking of doing something life-aquatic-ey for halloween, and so I've made up these shoes for him to wear. We haven't pinned down the rest of the outfit, but we'll see what we can do.

This is the finished product:

A little hint

About my newest project:

We've been here two years...

... And we're finally putting up some art. We borrowed the mat cutter from mark's parents, and bought some frames at Ikea and Goodwill, and luckily we had plenty of leftover mat boards from school. Mark's been cutting up a storm in our living room for two days, and we're finally getting somewhere. I am nervous about hanging real frames, since the pushpins we were using before don't seem so permanent. I'm so afraid of wrecking the walls, and it looking terrible. Oh wait, we already did that with the bike racks. I guess we're safe then.


I baked the first pie of the season tonight, and am eating a bowl of lentil soup (amy's organics, not homemade.) So many nice cozy nesting feelings. It's definitely beginning to be fall here.

And on to today

The last post got you caught up on what we did this summer, but this is what I've done today. Now I'm onto the bedroom. This is the least beautified of all our rooms. We didn't paint it when we moved in, and it just always seems overwhelmingly blah in there to me. when you lie on the bed, all you can see is white. The bedroom is where we hide a lot of our messes.

-We moved the old TV in there, on the sewing machine treadle table. This is used mostly as a place to put our jeans and other clothes we plan on using more than once. We also have a pile of pillows and other bedding that I don't know what to do with. there's no other place to put it, and we use all of it. It doesn't stack well, and when you pull one thing out, or try to put something back in, it all falls over itself. We also have various pieces of shelving. I consolidated it to all, as well as the MDF and particleboard, behind the closet door. We keep the red bike in here too. Nothing we can do about that. The bookshelf in the bedroom has also been rearranged several times, and now is probably at it's best, although it doesn't look it.


-We have a bit of art on the walls in here, but it doesn't seem to brighten it up at all. We've got kelsey's artichoke painting over mark's side table, my flower crown form my wedding over my side table. I've got the recently finished sihouettes over the bed, and an old poster for the New York Central System on one wall.

-There is alot of art projects scattered all over the bedroom, mixed in with shelving, rockband equipment, cds, etc. I'm trying to consolidate it. Along with that, there are several stacks of music and video games in here. Since most of the art and cds aren't mine, there's only so much I can do, But I can at least pile it all together. I have gone through my old cds tonight, throwing away anything I don't need, duplicates, etc. I've got quite a few cds that are just pictures from a long time ago. I was going to save all these onto the Pluginbaby, but I couldn't find the power cord (despite all the attempts at cord wrangling I did earlier the summer), so for now they've been put in chronological order in one of my cd wallets. The other wallet now holds most mixes I've made or been given. There's a stack of burned music that I will probably never listen to again, but I spent one night in college drawing some really interesting pictures on each album, as I prepared to take them with me on a trip. I really like them, but it's all on my computer, and I don't have any cases for any of it, so I really just need to get rid of it.

-I put all of Peter's music in chronological order, and all my music that's still got a case. these all fit in a shoe box, along with the mixes wallet. They're on the shelf next to all the mailing stuff. I need to probably find a better place for it, but mark doesn't really want to put any of our music besides the records on display, so we'll see.

-I've started to try to see what I can do with mark's cds, but I know he won't want me to do anything with it. He has a huge cd wallet that he's been putting a lot of his games and DVDs lately, so I'm hoping most of this goes there too.

-We have a big shelving unit that mark used to have in his room at home, I'm thinking of putting up in the corner near the window, which will hopefully take care of some of our camping gear, tools, and art. Let's see if I can put it together by myself!