It's beginning
The stress of the last few months has lifted today! Chloe wrote her last exam first thing this morning and handed in her last essay directly after and, as of 11am, she's free as a bird. She is also half way thru her fourth and final year of her bachelor's degree! Hooray for the clover!To celebrate we decided to make some gingerbread cookie dough and chill it till tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll bake and ice the cookies. Anyway, it's December, which means "bring on the cookies" in any language, so gingerbread today and tomorrow, followed by shortbread and several types of traditional Czech cookies.
I always use the same Martha Stewart recipe. A tried and true sort of thing, I suppose. Do you do that? Stick with one recipe for years and years? I do. The way I figure, there are probably millions of gingerbread recipes out there with some sort of variation, like less ginger, more cinnamon, one egg, two eggs, no eggs...gluten free...eeek... but how much difference can there really be?
The dough in this recipe needs to chill and so C and I decided to do some Christmas decorating round here.
C climbed into the loft above the garage to retrieve the Christmas boxes and the artificial tree. Our rule for Christmas trees is, if Christmas is in Vancouver, it's a huge Norway spruce; all fragrant and shimmery, but if Christmas is in England then our artificial tree comes down and does us wonderful service. Along with the tree came five boxes of glass ornaments, (yes I'm addicted) and my aunts beautiful painting of the Sistine Madonna.
It's such a thrill to open the boxes and remember all the beautiful ornaments; the treasures of trips back to Prague, vintage finds, special place/time commemorations...special ornaments, some of which were from my childhood. And along with them one huge living room mess.
The tree is almost done. The Sistine Madonna still provisionally propped up on top of the carved desk. I'm not sure where to hang the painting yet and C's been walking around the house holding it up against the walls for me to decide.Maybe in the dining room.