Sweet time -

This afternoon I invited the Stone girls to come over and help me decorate our Christmas tree, since I was home alone for a while. I figured having a couple sweet girls to help me make decorating much more fun, and I was right! :) Anna could not come, but Emily and Livvy did, and it was SUCH a blessing having them here with me. I put in some Christmas music and we put up all the decorations, and it looks soooo lovely. :) Thank you so much, girls, for making it so pretty with me! It meant a lot to have informal-friend time at my house. You'll see a couple pics later on in the post of the tree and the ornaments, mainly because I just organized the pics, and I don't want to drag them all the way back up here to be earlier in the post.

Girls, you just cheered up my day! I thank God for both of you!!

Before the girls came, I had whipped up some cookies and put them in the freezer to chill, and so while they were still here, we made a batch, but shocker, shocker - I only took a few pics until after they left. Yes, it's because we were too covered in flour. :)

So, here's the Cookie post! I'm going to type up the recipe for below, because these were 5 star beauties! I took a shortbread cookie recipe and put in some maple syrup for flavoring, because really, I wanted some fall reminders, as well as Christmas fun. :)

We have these adorable and tiny cookie cutters that we used.

Half of the dough, thawing out for a bit.

Waiting for cookies, taking pics of the pin.

Maple leaves, pumpkins, stars, fluted circles and hearts!

The recipe, handwritten. :) Can you read it? haha.

See those scraps? Eat them. We did. Haha.

Eating scraps is a delightful occupation.

The baking counter.

Staring at the clock and begging it to bake faster so you don't snitch yet another cookie off of the unbaked tray. Haha.
Baking -

Whilst waiting, I took pictures of the tree! Ta- DA!

Little wooden Frosty man.

Hey, look, they were both snowmen, I just realized that. *smacks forehead* This is a CB favorite of mine. :)

A Momma favorite. I want to marry a Doctor Sugar. :)

Whilst waiting, go outside and take pictures of whatever so happens to catch your fancy -

Reminders that fall is leaving -

Love it.

Oh, okay. This is me. See the flour on my cheek and nose? Yeah, okay ... I was baking. I'm sure there is no more explanation needed, right?

Mhmm hmm, and please also take note of the rogue curl on the right side of my head, and the fact that I edited this a bit Daguerreotype because I was not wearing makeup, and (cough) didn't want to look like a raccoon from the circles around my eyes.

Did you know that the name raccoon was derived by the early settlers from the Algonquin Indians, namely Chief Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas who called it a "ahrah-koon-em" or "Aroughcoune", meaning "the one who scrubs with its hands"? Yes. It's true. And no, I did not have to look that up on Wiki to tell you, but yes, I did have to look up the spelling.

Moving on.

Back inside.

I remembered that I wore a red shirt, and I thought, how cute would it be, if I could take one of the cookies, and hold it against my red shirt! SOO cute, I thought. The only way to take this picture and NOT drop the camera was to put it on the counter and push the shutter button, and hold the cookie against my shirt at mid torso. And so I did. It took me until I got the pictures sorted, uploaded, and starting to edit (seriously, Jean!) that I realized that it might look like it was a "loving baby-belly-pic". *slaps head into keyboard and starts laughing* This might not strike you as true if you are not A: a photographer or B: look at photography blogs all the time.

However. So ... I alternated between total hysterical laughter and wondering if I should put this up, but since it was taken in total innocence and still is totally innocent and because they have turned out to be two of my new favorite pictures because they are soooo cute and such good shots, I am blogging them. I am not pregnant. These are not baby belly pics, although, seriously, how CUTE would that be as a baby pic? Really. I shouldn't have even blogged the idea, and kept it for myself, but they are too cute not to share. Okay. So here they are.

I heart little Maple-y Shortbread cookies.

AAH! I love this picture. :) Hahahaha....going to keep laughing when I see it, though. *shakes head* Ok, ok - so the caption I was thinking as I took it was -

" I :heart: you, Anna Grace!! We missed you, love".

See? Totally fun and so not thinking like what it might look like. Haha. Forgive me? ;)

Mopsie Moosie reeeaally wanted some cookies.
I :heart: sweet little doagie Mopsie.
She :heart's: cookies.
And me, and NO, not in that order!
How dare you .... haha.
Stop feeling sorry for her. She had some.

Step Number #5(don't ask, I just picked a number)while baking - Fall in love with your French rolling pin. Take a picture of it, so you can look at it fondly, and thank God for it. Kiss the pin, and be grateful that such a wonderful thing was ever made. It made the cookies perfect.

SEE? Even the cookies :heart: my French rolling pin!
.... is this too much? Tell me now .... (laughing)
Last but not least, Momma's trusty and faintly rusty sifter.
I do believe we are buying her a new one for Christmas. :)
Viola! The lovely and charming result of, actually, not that much work!

It looks like more than what it was. I sent home 1/3 of the batch with my Christmas tree workers and to Anna with specified instructions on which cookies go to Anna ... I should probably check with them on this hugely important detail and make sure it was carried out in full.

Or not.

They were worth it. And the cookies were worth making! It was a sweet time of fellowship, a sweet time of decorating, a sweet time of singing, a sweet time for eating, and a sweet memory, thank the Lord, and thanks, darling friends! Twas a great way to end November '09.

And now ... The recipe! I got the original recipe from Martha Stewart.com, you can see it here. It was written up for Scottie-dog-shaped cookies, but I wanted fall leaves. So fall leaves I made. And I wanted fall leaves that tasted like maple syrup, so fall leaves that tasted like maple syrup I made. Here's the recipe, with my alterations to it - it gets 5 stars from me!

Maple Shortbread Cookies -
*****

Ingredients:

~ 2 cups all purpose flour
~ 3/4 tsp. salt
~ 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp (I used salted)
~ 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
~ 1 rounded tsp. vanilla extract
~ 2 1/2 tsp. of pure maple syrup or more, depending how rogue and how maple-y you want them (real stuff, no Aunt Jemima's now!)

Directions:

1. Sift flour and salt, set aside.

2. Whip butter in blender, about 3 minutes or until light colored and fluffy, add confectioners sugar and cream again, for about 2 mins., add vanilla and maple syrup.

3. Add flour mix, combine on low speed until flour is mixed in and dough sticks together.

4. Separate the dough into 2 portions, and wrap each half in plastic wrap, making sure that no part is open to the air, flattening them into round discs(if you are like me, they will be rounded squares, who cares!), and chilling them an hour in the freezer.

5. Take dough out about 15 mins. before you are ready to work with it. Sprinkle flour on the counter, unwrap frozen dough, sprinkle tiny amount of flour on top. Leave it. Walk away. Do not touch, do not eat. Do not slap against counter to watch it break. Trust me.

6. After 15 mins, come back and it should give under firm pressure from your index finger, if it doesn't, give it a bit more time. Take your rolling pin, and slowly and firmly (but not TOO hard, remember this is Shortbread, delicate and crumbly) roll it out to 1/4 inch thickness (mine was about 3/8ths, but who was measuring? hahaha), cut it out with cookie cutters (dipped in flour first), and scoop up with a serving spatula (to keep from them breaking on you) upon Stoneware, or parchment lined cookie sheets and bake for 15 mins.

7. Remove carefully with spatula onto parchment paper or a wire rack to cool, or like I did, paper on top of the wire rack. EAT. Enjoy. Relish with wild abandon. Put in mouth, do not chew, and feel it melt into maple wonder. Oh my word. They are sooo good.

8. Repeat with second disc. Warning: if you plan to do both discs one after the other, while you are cutting out cookies from the first disc, you NEED to be thawing out the second one. But don't get them out at the same time, because with shortbread you want it to be firm and cold when it goes in the oven. That's why you only roll out the dough twice, or at the most, three times, cutting your edges as close as you can (no pun intended, haha), because it will warm and soften too much. And that's also why you eat the last little scraps. Because they are not worth baking. But they are SO worth eating.

If you have any huge amounts of questions, you can e-mail me. I doubt you will, though. They are really very easy, and made about 4 dozen little cookies, tea sized, but would make about 20 normal sized cookies? I'm guessing. We have about 1 1/2 dozen here, because, ahem. Someone ate some. :)

Long post, eh? Sweet times, sweet times. Thanks for readin', ya'll.

With love for sweet times,
for the Savior who loves me with wild abandon,
Whom I need more than the air I breath,
and in Whom I rest -
~ Jean Marie

A quote this morning from a dear friend set my heart to rest in the Lord -
"Through the deepest possible pain GOD IS ENOUGH. God is enough. He is good. He will take care of us. He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure - 'Whom have I in heaven but you? And on earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever' .... God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him - in the midst of loss, not prosperity" ~ John Piper