gingerbread and tea

A couple of days ago it snowed.It was completely expected because the temperature was down to below something ridiculous for Vancouver and the upcoming snow was all anyone was talking about. It was on the news, on the radio, people were taking about it at the stores, neighbours, Chloe, my mother...snow plows were beign deployed, salt was being spread at an alarming rate, everyone was up in arms about the upcoming snow. Believe me, snow in town is a special thing because, after all I live on the West Wet Coast. And then it happened. I woke up to a centimetre of crystaly powdering over the garden and streets. It was so pretty. It was so perfect. It was as if overnight Christo and Martha Stewart got together and said, "Come on, you and me, let's do this!" :)Yesterday I drove down the hill to pick up C from her work and to run a few errands and then, drove back up the hill again. It was only about 4:30pm but by that time the ground began to freeze and pulling my heavy 4runner up the steep grade made the front wheels dance like crazy from the pushing of the back wheels. Robert said that perhaps I should have engaged the four wheel drive and I said it wasn't that bad. He said, "what do you consider 'that bad'?" I said, "when it scares me...this was fun...a challenge." He said, "what are you like?" :D (By the time I got home mom had already called 17 times because she was convinced I had spun off the road and was dead in some ditch in Richmond. I'm telling you, we Vancouverites take our snow seriously.)But mainly Vancouverites know better and tend to stay off the roads till everything melts, which is usually the very next day, so C and I decided to stay at home this afternoon and have tea and decorate the gingerbread cookies we baked.Don't you love the smell of gingerbread?We had our tea in these very special cups C bought recently. They are designed by Parisian artist Florence Balducci. She fell in love with them at Anthropologie and, when they were in the sale section, and it was Black Friday, and she just happened to be there to have supper with her father...well, what do you call it when everything comes together? The Bermuda triangle. But don't you love them as much as gingerbread? There are birds on the cup. There's a pheasant, a magpie and a woodpecker and an owl on the inside saying "me too", and a fox wraps herself around the bottom of the cup from the plate.So we sat and drank some tea and watched this insane video of crazy winter driving, and decorated snowflakes and snowmen and raindeer and moose and gingerbread men and candles and Christmas trees and maples leaves, and sprinkled sugar and dragee balls and coconut flakes on our cookies, and now we have plenty of beautiful, fragrant cookies for everyone on our lists.It's a good thing too because I'm off to England tomorrow. C is staying here though :( but we will speak every day. (Shh...Please don't tell C that she's 21 and actually doesn't HAVE to call me every day; she hasn't figured that out yet.) Also, because it's so much work to get the Vancouver house arranged before I leave and to get everything sorted for my flight, I might not be able to visit my tea lovelies for a couple of days...but I'll try to do my best.Linking with Terri and Martha and Sandi and Bernideen and Kathy and also Kathe with an e :)