My camera has quickly been filling up with pictures of the festive frivolities going on around here...mostly baking and crafting. But they've had a harder time making the transition onto the blog...until today, I'll share a few!
I recently acquired my Grandma's fabulous Mirro cookie press! What a fun tool! It's a treasure trove of bits and pieces that I can see getting lots of use in my future. I feel as though I've inherited a bit of a family heirloom, seeing my Grandma's pretty cursive within the original old box. She made note of cookies she made, dates she made them on, and other little baking notes to remember. While I was scrubbing and cleaning up the old press in preparation of cookie-making, even Hub eagerly offered his cookie-press assistance...you know, guys and tools.
We made our family's Chocolate Christmas Tree recipe...an annual Christmas cookie standby. Mum usually decorates her cookies with melted white chocolate (died green) and strung across the tree, garland-like.
But Mum was unavailable when I was going to frost mine and I didn't know just what exactly she used to frost her trees then...so I used a buttercream sort of frosting and made little snowball-ish/ornament adornments. I pondered out loud, rather doubtful, that they weren't just like Mum's, to which Hub noted that it was nice to put my own little spin on these cookies. So perhaps a new tradition is born, a melding of recipes and cookie tools...old and new!
Now there are murmurings of a big snowstorm heading this way, just in time for Christmas...oh my...so I'll be signing off from the blog until next week to tie up loose ends and enjoy the holiday with our dear family.
Merry Christmas!
Yesterday, we bundled up and headed out into the gray, snowy afternoon to snowshoe for our first time of the season...since we finally have some measurable snow! 
And I remembered why I love snowshoeing. The land is so different in wintertime. So peaceful. Snowflakes cling to dried up, fuzzy wildflowers.
New nests are discovered, more easily spotted after it snows.
This was a big nest (maybe a robin's?) full of straw, twine, and fur.
A stand of trees discovered just beyond our woods that we'd never really seen before. 
The occassional shock of collapsing into deeper snow and the smile that alights on the other's face when this happens. (Do you see hub?)
Realizing that I almost like dried up wild flowers better in the wintertime with their star-like, spikey shapes. Or perhaps you just have to look harder for beauty in the white, twiggy landscape...so you settle for some dried up old flowers. Just maybe.
Last Friday, hub walked in the door after a long work week with a pretty bouquet of flowers for me. And they are still going strong today, a week later (minus the pink gerbera daisy below)!
Then on Sunday morning, the sun was coming in so fiercely, so intense...perhaps the frost on the trees and snow covering the ground intensified its brilliance. It seemed almost...magical. 
A pretty, soft snow has been falling here all day. And now that its snowing, it finally feels a little bit more Christmas-y and Wintery. Although I'm not really crazy about the chill in the air, I'm staying bundled and earlier this week did some more trimming all the while singing along with 
Also, I was thinking about all the little craft projects I shared the 
So life lately seems to have fallen into about 4 categories for me: eating, walking, crafting, and trimming (the house, the tree, whatever I can trim!). So I'll cover a few highlights from each... First, eating... I know this is a bit belated, but I just had to share a photo of Mum's tasty turkey cookies. She makes these every year for Thanksgiving and it just wouldn't be quite the same without her pretty sugar cookies. 
Our Thanksgiving was really pleasant, spending time with our sweet family and eating lots of good things...and then walking some of it off with our annual Thanksgiving walk...not quite as many participants as 
After spending the holiday away, we had a quiet weekend back home. I, doing heaps of crafting, packaging, and seeking out good light for picture-taking (not an easy task these days)...and Hub, climbing the roof and stringing Christmas lights. 
On Sunday, we went to pick out a tree from Pappy...the kind man down the road that we buy our tree from each year. If you recall what happened