Accomplishment Girl Celebrates the Season

[ladysprite]

My favorite thing about the holiday season - whatever holiday you, or I, may choose to celebrate (and I choose to celebrate pretty much all of them, since they all seem to boil down to the same thing in my mind) - is baking. While I sometimes find and give other presents, I love making and sharing cookies and candies more than just about anything else. So that's what I spent today doing.

So far today, I've made vanilla bean biscotti, raspberry walnut pinwheels, and several dozen absolutely delectable coconut bonbons. Cranberry crackle bars are in the oven, and I'm trying to decide whether to go ahead and make peanut brittle tonight or to call it a day and leave that for tomorrow.

I've spent the entire day baking and listening to the all-holiday music radio show, other than a quick break to pet-sit for a friend's cats and buy extra fresh vanilla beans. I look like an utter slob - I'm wearing my baggy, too-big jeans and a shapeless sweatshirt that is, at this point, covered in smudges of flour and powdered sugar and melted chocolate. My hair is stuffed haphazardly into a doubled-over ponytail. If my husband hadn't nagged, I probably wouldn't have had anything to eat today other than half a broken pinwheel cookie and whatever chocolate I licked off my fingers after finishing the bonbons.

And all of this makes me far happier than I have any right to be. My house smells like heaven. I've entered the time of year and frame of mind where holiday music is delightful instead of cloying (though I'll still never be able to tolerate that horrid Christmas Shoes song). There are racks and trays of finished treats cooling on almost every flat surface, and I've already started planning out when and how to hand them all out to friends.

Baking is nowhere near done; I've still got at least half a dozen other cookie varieties to put together, some of which need to wait until the day or so before I start delivering. But that just means that I get to extend my fun over the next week or so, and spend that much more time making things that I love for people I love. And even if everything else in my life is lousy, that'll make it all worthwhile.

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Sounds absolutely yummy!

[geochick.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a mah-velous way to spend a Saturday before Christmas.

[joannahurley.livejournal.com]

I baked yesterday too, with my mom & sister. We made pecan puffs (for which we use walnuts instead), peanut butter cookies, chocolate dipped chocolate chip shortbread logs, and pretzle chocolate bark. They made the oatmeal raisin cookies after I left. :)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I'm wearing my baggy, too-big jeans and a shapeless sweatshirt that is, at this point, covered in smudges of flour and powdered sugar and melted chocolate.

It says something about you that imagining you like that automatically makes me assume you're as happy as is humanly possible.

(Oh, and happy birthday!)