Since this is a new blog this year, I realized I needed to add a pic of Alina Jayne's Chinese Christmas tree. I got the idea from my friend Kat, who has two beauties adopted from China. So the first year she was home from China, I decided to make her tree a Hunan Chili Pepper Tree-to honor our Spicy Girl's homeland. It is a fiber optic tree (but you really can't tell that in the pic), then I added the chili pepper lights. When we were in China we bought some cloisonne ornaments, and we give her a new one every year to hang on her tree. In 2006 we gave her a stocking, 2007 was a snowman, and this year it is a bulb with Chinese knotting cord. I just found out that my Dad bought us another table top tree, so that one will be dedicated to Ethiopia for our new baby!!!!!!!!
We have had a delightfully peaceful weekend. This was my weekend off, so Friday night I decided that I would not have any agenda-anything that got done would be great, anything left undone was fine too. We did not get up early either Saturday or Sunday (well, Matt did-he went to work), and we even stayed in our jammies ALL day on Saturday. We decided to spend our time playing games, cooking and napping.
Today was cookie day. Alina Jayne has been begging me to make "gingermen" cookies. So I thought-wow, we could do that this year instead of cutouts. We spent part of the afternoon baking and decorating-what a blast! At one point while we were baking, I had to run out to Matt's shop to retrieve the cookie sheets I used to flat freeze the garden veggies at summer's end (you can see how much baking I have done lately-I never even missed them until today!) When I came back into the house, I saw that Alina Jayne had not only rolled a chunk of cookie dough out and cut out 3 gingerbread men all by herself and put them onto the cookie sheet-but she had ALSO FLOURED THE THE PASTY BOARD FIRST!
Off to play Candyland. I will never win, my daughter cheats! Keeps a few cards tucked away under her bum in case she's close to winning and needs to move two spots. It's okay, I'm a good sport, and she admits she doesn't play fairly-at least she doesn't lie about it!
So Serious!
See???
Aren't These The Best Looking Cookies You've Ever Seen?
