Christmas decorating and baking ...

Most of the house is decorated now other than our tree. We'll put it up sometime next week. I did things a bit differently and really was pleased with how everything came out. Here's the window above my kitchen sink ... DH said he liked the "childlike" feeling of the window sill ... said it looked like I had fun putting this together ...

This area is in my kitchen nook ...

and here's the kitchen table ... there are now candy kisses in the glass tree and candy canes in the square basket ...

we have a room divider that is home for a lot of my reindeer at Christmas ... here's a picture of a couple of the shelves ... this year I put all my antique reindeer all together on one shelf ...

this is a small wall in our kitchen, which backs up to our family room ... these plates are from Crate and Barrel, pretty cute plates for $5 each! I've been collecting them for the last few years. Usually they hang in the dining room for Christmas, but then I don't get to see them alot, so this year DH helped me hang them in the kitchen and I love how they look!

and here's the fireplace mantel in our family room ... one of my very favorite place to decorate (for every holiday!) cause we spend all our time here and get to enjoy the display ...

Now on to the baking part of this post ... yesterday Lisa and I got together for our annual Christmas cookie baking. We had a great day ... after baking we had pizza and watched Miracle on 34th Street and then enjoyed the hot tub ... wonderful day/evening!

Here's Lisa ... wonder if I made her forget how many cups of flour she was doing?? lol

cooling the cookies ... don't you love the smell of Christmas cookies ... all the butter and sugar and vanilla smells ...

Here's what I had this morning after our day of baking ... some curious reindeer want to know what's in the tins ...

here's all the goodies ... we have cranberry cookies and Spritz cookies, two tins of pretzel bark (thanks Paulette) and a pan of Crispix mix (caramel coating with peanuts) ... hmmmm think maybe I need a little plate of goodies to go with my latte that DH just brought home for me :)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I'm off to stitch and watch the Seahawks ...

I hope you find your Joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for Christmas goodies ...

brrrrrrr

Wow, seems like it's cold everywhere in the US right now .. well, maybe not Florida! lol .. we are having unusually cold weather for Washington, some of the coldest temps since the early 1990's. Just gotta love global warming! lol .. looks like we are going to get some snow tonight/tomorrow .. 1 to 6 inches in the lowlands .. that's a lot for us .. not for the mountains, down here .. it'll cause havic everywhere. But ya know what .. I just love it! and it's really easy to get in the Christmas spirit when it's cold and snowy outside .. like I need an excuse to be in the Christmas spirit! lol


Lisa and I did our annual Christmas cookie baking on Saturday. This year we were a bit more crazy than usual, we baked 6 different types of cookies and we make 2 double batches of each .. YIKES! lol the least amount of cookies each got was 80 cookies! lol funny thing is they will be all gone by New Years Day. We made 2 cookies that we've made before, the Eggnog Cookies and Peanut Butter Rice Crispy bars. The other 4 cookies are Strawberry Cream Cheese Rounds, Double Chocolate Espresso cookies, Spicy Gumdrop cookies and Chocolate Carmel Wafers. Here's a peek some of the supplies ...


the cookie bakers ...


and some of the goodies ...


Tonight DH and I went Christmas shopping, with the snow coming tonight, we really wanted to get it all done, or close to it. The one thing DH and I do really well is shopping, really we do! I had a good start already, but tonight we finished up everyone but 3 family members .. and we know what we are going to do for them, so they should be easy to finish. This is my last week of work before Christmas break. Boeing gives us about a week off, paid time off between Christmas and New Years. I took 3 extra days of vacation .. so I'll be off from 12/22 - 1/6 *woo hoo* lol

I've been doing a bit of stitching, but most of it's for Christmas presents, so no pictures to share yet.

Speaking of stitching .. A couple of weeks ago Peppermint Twist was released and I mentioned on my blog and to a couple of other stitchers about doing a SAL starting in January. Well, my dear friend Karen took the lead and started a blog for this SAL. Come join us, we'd love to have you .. or just bookmark this link and come watch the progress. I received my chart, fabric and threads over the weekend .. omgosh I just love it in person! Can't wait for January :)

Thanks everyone for your comments .. I really enjoy reading them. Stay safe and warm out there.

I'm grateful for cookies to give as gifts ...

Crazy Mother Nature and Pictures ...

I think we in Washington State really made Mother Nature angry .. not sure what we did .. but the last 3 days have been some of the most crazy weather I've seen in a long time around here. It all Saturday when we woke up to snow, great weather to be baking Christmas cookies in *smile* So it snowed all day, we got about 3 inches which is a lot for us, especially in early December. Sunday morning we woke up to more snow, which turned to rain and it rained and rained like I haven't seen it rain in years .. it rained so much that the rivers started flooding sooner than ever, the storm systems couldn't drain away the water fast enough and our Governor declare the a state of emergency before 1pm today. It's the 2nd wettest 24 hours in state history! There are counties that seriously should be building arks. There is currently one town so flooded that the people can't get out and emergency vechiles can't get in. Combined with the rain the coast had severe winds. We are lucky, out community seems to only have some minor water over roadway spots .. but if you go a mile in any direction it seems everyone has a flooding story. Please send up some prayers for the flood victims and hopefully the rain will stop for a while so we can start digging out.

So, while all that weathe was happening, Lisa and I were able to cook up 5 different Christmas cookie recipes. 4 of them turned out great, one was a complete disaster and tasted so bad that we threw them all away! But the 4 that did work out were awesome! We made S'mores cookies, Eggnog Cookies, Angel Wing's and chocolate dipped/peppermint candied pretzel rods. I think we each ended up with 4 dozen of each kind. I got them in the freezer before the family ate too many of them! lol

Oh and I found the camera battery charger .. it was under a bunch of clean clothes in the master bedroom .. go figure! kik ,, but now I can share some pictures again! woo hoo *smile* Here's a picture of Lizzie*Kate's Ho ho ho that I finished last week. The banner for it came today .. I love these banners!
More pictures tomorrow .. hope everyone had a great weekend.

I'm grateful for being dry ...