We’ve just put our girls to bed after a fun day at home. Tomorrow we head up north to visit family where Mom has told me that it’s too warm to snow. Mmmhmmm. We’ll see if that holds out. *grins*
Like last year, I spent part of today baking. Only this year, I took one of my gifts for a test run. I got a French rolling pin! The marble one I had been using for urm… more years than I can remember was becoming problematic in my dotage, so I asked for a new one and whattya know… it was under the tree!
One of the family’s favorite cookie types is, of course, the kind you have to roll and cut out with cookie cutters. This stems from their beloved great-great grandmother known fondly as “Nanny.” I never had the honor of meeting her in her prime, but from all of the stories I have heard, I would have adored her. She was a fantastic cook and an amazing baker. She happened to make some amazing sugar cookies and sand tarts. Both of which require rolling and cookie-cutting. I have her recipes and have become the family baker. Sooooooo… after spending years rolling and rolling and cutting and cutting and ending up covered in flour (and seeing the occasional cat covered in flour because she didn’t see where she was jumping up onto the counter *giggle*), I have finally come up with a method to ease the triple and quadruple recipes of sugar cookies and sand tarts that are churned out of my kitchen every December.
My savior? Silpats! They’re silicon-based and food doesn’t stick to them. Specifically, the burned-on sugar that results after my girls have finished “decorating” cut-out sugar cookies. So what do I do now? I roll out my cookie dough on the Silpat, cut in the shapes (gently, of course!), remove the excess dough, decorate (sugar cookies) or brush with an egg white and cinnamon wash (sand tarts), pick up the whole shebang and plop it onto my cookie sheet and voila! It’s ready for the oven. I rinse and dry the Silpats between rollouts… but it’s a breeze to do as nothing sticks.
It still takes me a few days to get all of the cut out-type cookies done and it is hard on my hands, but it’s a gift to my family. The compliment that warms my heart the most is, “These taste just like Nanny’s!”
What a busy last few weeks it has been! I won’t bore you with all of my running here and there and then back to here because I forgot something and then back over there because what I forgot here was gone so I had to get it there anyway. (Lost? I sure was which was my problem in the first place!)
I finished something! *does a little jig* But I can’t show you yet ’cause the recipient won’t get it until Sunday. So you’ll have to wait until after then for me to post a picture. Nyah nyah! While I’m in brat mode, I’ll mention that Kat is being so mean not letting us start Chatelaine’s Secret Victorian Garden (MX) yet! *sticks out her bottom lip until it reaches the floor*
So to make me feel better, I’ll leave you with my favorite holiday cartoon…
*giggles*
But I bought a new one and I keep finding others that I like! What’s the deal?!? The new chart is Chatelaine’s Mystery XI, also known as the Celtic Mystery. Kat and I knew it was coming and had it slated as our only possible purchase for the first six months of 2008. (Or is it for all of 2008? I forget what the plan is. Both of us have enough WIPs and stash to keep us more than busy for several years.) Anyway, the chart is lovely and we’re going to start it, or I am, anyway, as soon as I have my fibers and beads (due to ship January 10th) and figure out which brown fabric I’m going to use. That I managed to narrow it down to brown is a miracle in itself! This mandala is a bugger to choose fabric for with all the colors Martina is using… she covers the whole rainbow in this one!
Then Nadia Tate went and released her Candlelight Fairy ACEO to HAED which has become a new Quickstitch. How lovely is she? *sigh*
And then Nancy Faulkner released this lovely Amaryllis to HAED which has become a new PTP chart. Look at those gorgeous shades of red!
Whatever is a girl to do?
Yup, it’s back. What I call “The Season of Me.” No, not me personally, the other mes out there. About mid-November people change around here and start getting really mean and selfish and it’s just not in stores – it’s also driving. DC/MD/Northern VA driving can be scary normally, but this time of year it’s worse. This year, I have a bit more of an excuse to not have to brave the traffic and the stores. Six weeks ago, when shopping with my girls at the craft store for art supplies for a school project, Maggie pointed to the right with an exclamation of, “Mommy, look!” and right after I looked, she stopped and in order for me to not bowl her over, I had to stumble my way around her and twisted my foot up the curb. Ouch. I put ice on it the first day. Heat the next two. It turned lots of pretty colors but then turned back to it’s normal color. It ached now and again but when I did the Book Fair and was on my feet for 12 hours at a time it started to hurt quite a bit and swelled a little. Then I couldn’t walk without limping and some new burning shooting pain started. Hrm.
Today, my family chased me to the doctor. I waved to Jenni hard at work doing cool thermal stuff on my way there and then sat in the doctor’s office and did some stitching until it was my turn. The doc poked at my foot, tugged on my toes and compared one foot to the other. She told me I was stubborn for waiting so long to come in and then for refusing pain meds because it doesn’t hurt that badly that often. (Besides, I choke down enough pills a day as it is. Bleh!) So she bustled me off to radiology to have an x-ray taken and told me to keep off of it and that she’ll call me back once radiology sends her the results. So I packed my stuff up, hopped in the car and waved to Jenni again as I headed over to get my foot x-rayed. 
I made some more Xs while I waited. Have I mentioned that those plates they use are COLD? So after being poked, prodded and frozen, I hobbled home and crashed on the sofa and prodded Scott into entertaining me by playing Half-Life 2. I did some more stitching and realized the humor of what I had stitched for the day. Those two candy canes are the letter “r” in the word “merry” however the phrase, “Be err…” had me giggling earlier today and has me giggling now. And before anyone asks, that white doo-dad is a snowflake.
I have another stitchy picture around here somewhere, too. It’s Candice Dillhoff’s “Mermaid Thinking” charted by Heaven and Earth Designs. 
It was a birthday present from Sonya and I worked on her over Thanksgiving as part of the Holiday/Mermaid HAED SAL. If you don’t know what all those letters mean, you probably don’t want to know. 
Here’s my big blue-eyed sparkly thinking girl… now with some hair! There’s another SAL at the end of December and I hope to be able to give her some more hair then, but P&Ds are calling loudly!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Here I sit quite full of food. After clean up it’s time for dessert… and here is the promised picture of the pie dough I conquered and the resulting French Apple Tart. 
Heat up your slice for a few seconds and add some whipped cream and YUM! The crust is nice and flaky and buttery and the apples are just the right combination of tartness and sweetness. Since it’s been a few years since I’ve made this, I was pleasantly surprised that it came out after my first pie dough err… flop.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
