Mish Mash

Wow, only thirteen days til Christmas!! I finally turned my lights on! I love multicolored lights.

And here is a picture of our little house with the lights on at night. I notice there is a small section (maybe two) that isn't lit up, and the anal person I am, it is driving me nuts and I want my husband to climb up there and fix it!! He claims they were all working when he put them up. Hmmm. Curious.

Winter has descended upon us with force. So I did the only thing I could do. I downloaded the Pioneer Woman's recipe for her favorite Christmas cookies and I got baking. I watched the snow fall outside and baked cookies with Chase. He started out helping me with the dough, but as you can tell by the picture he couldn't wait to get to the cookie cutting part, as he has a cookie cutter in his hand, lol. He used the mixer for the first time, usually he covers his ears and runs, he's always had a thing for loud noises and power tools and not liking the noises they make, but today he didn't seem to mind it.

And of course the favorite part of mixing the dough, is licking off the egg beaters... :)

I had a hard time rolling out the dough for this recipe, I found it a little crumbly, although I am thinking it may be something I did rather than a fault of the recipe. Anyone have any idea why this might have been? I'm always up for constructive criticism! The cookies did turn out wonderful though, and they look so pretty! Even with my sloppy icing job! And Chase loved them, especially the rogue Santa cookie. For whatever reason, we only made the one Santa, so Chase got to eat that one.

He's sideways for those of you that can't tell! Chase asked me where his eyes were, and I told him Santa is magic and doesn't need eyes to know if kids are good or bad!

This was the view out my front door this morning, which I was surprised at. We haven't had decent snow removal like this since we moved into this area 3 years ago, it was nice to see them clearing the streets.

And then, it started snowing again. Everything in my yard looks so desolate in winter! My bird feeder for instance (I have had this bird feeder for maybe two years now and have no birds. I have never had to refill the birdseed, and it makes me sad, as I put it there to attract birds and drive my cat crazy but that's another post altogether.)

The tree in our front yard (which looks huge from this angle but if you look in the picture above it is actually quite dinky) looks lonely as well.

I find children's play equipment is also a little incongruous with the winter environment. The rings hang in silence, waiting for a child to come and grab on and swing...

And there is a little pile of snow at the bottom of Chase's slide that shows us that no child's bottom has graced it for several days now!

And though it's snowing like a bugger, I suppose I should be thankful that it really isn't cold yet. This is a mild December for us by any means. Roads suck and we have to shovel the walk daily almost, but there's always a bright side!

Like the fact that it gave me a reason to bake! Nothing like a little bit of snow to give you that magical feeling and give you a little bit of the Christmas Spirit. And thank you PW, for sharing your yummy recipe!