it's been a good day. not much got graded (although i did manage to find some interesting stuff for the poetry unit in january), but we tried out 2 shortbread recipes and picked one as a fave, made saxy's favorite cookies, and made the simplest peanut butter cookies in the world. we've even made a box for the neighbors, and we've been steadily adding to it. and dug around in the books for a few other recipes to try.

which we'll be doing tomorrow - trying the new recipes that is. for a second day of baking, we'll make more chocolate crinkles, peanut butter cookies, some eggnog cookies, and we're going to try some moravian ginger cookies, plus chocolate stampers to make up for the fact that saxy likes neither ginger nor eggnog cookies. and i'll probably poke around in one more book to see if there's something else i'd like to try and actually have the ingredients for. i thought about making some pfeffernusse cookies, but the ingredient list is a bit long and we're probably missing something for it.

i'm enjoying this way too much, i think. we picked up some glass christmas balls today to put in a glass bowl for a centerpiece for the food table on christmas day. and two cute christmas mugs with stuffed animals (they were only 99¢). and more gift tags. i've really fallen for the decorator gift tags. i may just have to start thinking of getting the materials together and making my own. ;)

definitely enjoying this way too much.

a little digging around the house located another gift for jewel. she's been writing a lot poetry and lyrics and i have the perfect gift for her - something i had actually purchased for an entirely different reason and never used. and probably will never use. i still have the twin, so i'm losing out, and jewel will definitely love it. so kitten wrapped it up and signed it for the both of us, from 2 writers to another. i feel kinda bad that it's "second hand," especially with the way she complains literally about everything, but i think she'll like it regardless.

so, all i'm doing now is waiting on the last 2 gifts for saxy and the one last gift for kitten, then the tree is done. i don't know if this last bit of stuff will make it time, but i'm hoping. amazon tends to be really good about that. i generally get my amazon orders before they say i should; i just hope that will hold for the holidays.

maybe i should have gone with second day shipping after all. hrm . . . .

well, even without the final packages, the tree is definitely all done up and looks quite pretty with the pile of packages underneath. the glittery ribbons helps. ;) we're having a good year, in spite of all the other issues going on in the house. everyone is covered gift-wise. most are from the grandparents, but not all, and that's okay.

anyway, while we baked, we had christmas music on and the youngers were out playing in the front yard. later they watched the final lotr movie. they had a few cookies and some hot chocolate. so they were quite happy with the day themselves.

it's been a good day. oldest and i had a pretty good time making the cookies. jewel wrote out the recipes we picked out so we wouldn't have to mess up the books. tomorrow we get to do it all again, with some of the same and some new recipes. so i got my 2 cookie days, just one of them wasn't well enough ahead to send off some of our creations to friends.

i guess for next year i have to hope for 3 cookie days. ;)