Visiting Grandma: Part 1 (Grandma's Birthday)

My Grandma's 86th birthday was this past Tuesday, and I had decided that I'd go visit her. We went out to lunch with the "Tuesday Girls", Grandma's friends that she's known since high school. They used to meet every Tuesday when they were younger, but now they meet one Tuesday a month.

I bought these earrings for her at the Lilac Festival. They are pressed Forget-Me-Nots, one of Grandma's favorite flowers. Grandma doesn't have pierced ears and wears clip-ons. The earrings I got originally were for pierced ears, but the lady was kind enough to change them! She just switched the charm onto clip-ons for me right when I bought them!

I also made her some Raspberry-Rosemary syrup and some sugar cookies that look like buttons.

I got the "Button Cookie" idea from this site (the cookies on the site there are peanut butter cookies, but I didn't have enough peanut butter). I wanted to do this idea of stringing a ribbon through the holes for the presentation, but wasn't sure if I could do it without the cookies breaking. But the jelly canning jar presentation was cute enough.

And Mom sent Grandma's presents with me to give her, which included this small bouquet of flowers (Forget-Me-Nots, Lilies of the Valley, and Lilacs) from Mom's garden.

Next post: Part 2 (Birdwatching)

Feelin Festive

I keep thinking that my windows are fogged up, but it's just all the SNOW flying outside. I hope CJ gets home safe from work today.

Anyway, I've been feeling like the quintessential Christmas housewife the past few days, making gingerbread cookies while it's snowing outside and listening to Manneheim Steamroller...my favorite Christmas music...it makes me think of Christmas morning with my family since it's Dad's favorite Christmas music too, and he always plays the CDs on a loop on Christmas morning. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", "Still Nacht (Silent Night)", and "Veni Veni (O Come, O Come Emmanuel)" are my favorites.

I always say I don't enjoy cooking, but I do enjoy baking when the mood strikes me. Mostly cookies though, nothing fancy like cake or bread...CJ is my bread-making man. Here's the first batch of cookies I made (can you tell which one was for CJ?)...

A lot of them got eaten...

A special sign language "I love you" cookie for my Mommy...

And a dog cookie for Luna. Well...not really, I'm not going to let her eat it, but it looks kind of like her. I guess this one I'll give to Dad...he's our big dog lover.
Gingerbread cookies are addicting!...making them as well as eating them. I wanted to make some more, but didn't have enough molasses left from the first batch, so I looked up online what substitutes I could use...honey, corn syrup, maple syrup, or brown sugar. So my second batch I made, I used the rest of the molasses and honey...and look how much different they look from the first batch...but they taste just as good. I want to make another batch with maple syrup so I can compare.

And what, you may ask, am I going to do with all these cookies? Well, I already gave some away to Rachel downstairs, since she was kind enough to let me borrow her ground clove (I didn't have any) and her cool cookie cutters. But the rest I'm planning on bringing to church on Sunday and then bringing some to my parents' house Christmas Eve.

I got my recipie from Maya*Made's blog and found info on the substitutions from Yahoo Answers.