Twelve Days of Cookies

It's December! Blessed Advent to all. I love the season. I think I like preparing for Christmas just as much (maybe more) than Christmas itself.

I always try to make some sort of gift for each member of our church staff. One year, when Dave served a medium-sized church with a staff of about 12, I made each person a cute cross-stitched small tote bag, like a gift bag size. For that same staff, the next year I assigned a different month in the next year to each staff member and on the first staff meeting of that month made a batch of muffins in their honor to share at the meeting.

Dave now serves a really enormous church with an equally enormous staff. In fact, I couldn't tell you the names of half his coworkers and that really bothers me. Any way, a couple of years ago I did those cute crisscross coasters Jenny B. Harris has on her blog and made a cute bag with a coaster, Christmasy mug and a couple of packets of hot chocolate mix or cider. I made an number more of them for the UMW craft sale and they sold really well. Another year we did cookie cutter fudge for everyone.

So this year, I was trying to think of what to do and at about that time the Food Network website started their Twelve Days of Cookies e-mails. I get those every year (you get a different cookie recipe every day for 12 days) but I don't think I've ever actually made any of the cookies! We decided that every night we would make a double batch of that day's recipe and each take half to work the next day as our co-worker Christmas gift. We are on day four. Day one was a Paula Deen recipe for Gooey Chocolate Butter Cookies. Didn't think to take a picture. Day two was Garam Masala Chocolate Gingerbread.


Today we took Coconut Macaroons (my favorite so far) and tonight we made Biscotti with toasted almonds and dried cherries. Also really delicious.


It's been a big hit at both workplaces so far. I work at a big college and we have a lot of people through our office everyday so a lot of people have gotten to share in the cookie-eating. Dave said when he got to work the second day there was a group of people in the breakroom just standing there waiting for him.

It's been a fun activity to do together, as well and Dave is learning all kinds of new skills! Yesterday he learned how to fold beaten egg whites into the other part of the recipe. And every night when we're cleaning up we try to guess what the next day's recipe is going to be. Doesn't take much to entertain us, I guess.

Voting Day

It's voting day! Go out and vote if you've got a local election. We voted last week in early voting. My candidate for governor doesn't have a big chance of winning, but I'm still hopeful.

October

It has certainly been a long time since I last posted - about as long as it's been since I last sewed!

We had a crazy summer at work as we transitioned to a new software system for registration of our 24,000 students. It was a nightmare! Nothing seemed to work correctly. Three full weeks of daily screaming ensued. Mostly, it was students and parents screaming at all of us in the administration building, but there was plenty to share around the whole campus. It was physically and emotionally exhausting. We've worked most of the bugs out, but I'm a little worried about spring semester registration which starts next month.

So while we dealt with a million emergencies, my regular stuff fell off the map and now I'm in eternal catch-up mode. Can't wait for Christmas break!

Speaking of holidays, Halloween is around the corner!

Life

Thank you, Home and Heart! My thoughts exactly!

I love it!

Isn't it adorable! My daughter did it - she's learning to do digital art. I think it's too cute. I'm going to put it on my side bar.

Happy Graduation!

What a week we had! Our beautiful daughter graduated from high school a week ago yesterday. It was quite an adventure. I took most of the week off from work, and it was a good thing. Our good friend came in from Phoenix and from Wednesday morning on it was go, go, go. Actually, from Tuesday evening on it was crazy, because after picking Grace up on the last day of classes, we got in a wreck on the way home! We were just about to turn into our neighborhood when we were hit by someone who wanted to be in the same lane we were in! We didn't need the extra stress, believe me. No one was hurt, though.

Wednesday was graduation rehearsal and fetching our friend from the airport. We spent all day Thursday at a theme park! I'm not a roller coaster girl by any means, but our friend and our daughter are big time roller coaster-ers. My husband was out of town for the week at denominational meetings, but the bishop let him leave early on Friday for dinner here,

followed by graduation.

We're so proud!

As far as quilting goes, I'm hand-quilting my redwork santas. I've entered it in the New Braunfels guild's show in July! Yikes! I have to hurry! Good thing we're on four-day work week for the summer.

Design wall Monday

Here's what's on my design wall today - a gazillion sister's choice blocks. I'm trying so hard to use up scraps and stash. It's a slow process. It's also a good thing I like scrappy quilts.I had this basket with a bunch of miscellaneous repro fat quarters and six or eight small (like 4 1/2 inch) 9-patches. Using the fat quarters, I made a bunch more 9-patches, but they were so small I decided to raid the beige and brown stash and scraps and turn the 9-patches into sister's choice blocks.

I think I like it. It's definitely going to be machine quilted - too many seams for hand-quilting.

Check out other design walls at Judy's place.