Baking Cookies...

The house smells so yummy today. I'm making my super tasty Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies. They are the best, the hint of lemon in them makes them stand out. I love rolling the dough and using my favorite cookie cutters (old and new - I have a HUGE collection and can't stop buying them). Here's a pic of my cookies as I start the process. The dough makes tons of cookies so it is a lot of hours on my feet, but so worth it.

And last night I made my Mincemeat cookies. This cookie is everyone's favorite in my family. The slightly spicy mincemeat and apple coupled with quite possibly the world's best cookie dough makes for a big treat. These require two different cookie cutters per cookie as a smaller one is cut out for the top to vent.

I used my brand new snowflake cookie cutters and I'm rather happy with them. They are even cuter in the sugar cookies. I also made my meringue snowflake cookies a few days ago, but they got gobbled up and given away before I could take a single picture! I'm making more tonight. ;)

An Austen Christmas

I made these ornaments last year - I don't think anyone is unaware by now I love silhouettes. I saw a tree full of them in a magazine a few years ago and wanted one of my own. This is my little white tree, which I think shows them off much better than my green tree did last year.

I can't tell if I like it better lit up or not - both ways I guess. I love the soft glow of the lights, more romantic, but it still looks good in the daylight, too. Another thing I love about white trees.

Here are a few close ups of the silhouettes:

I made them on different shapes, backgrounds, colors, etc. to give them a varied feel like they've been collected. I love the different backgrounds of music and handwriting and even French text from an old French book I have. Each one of these is unique. I also stenciled them different on each side, a man on one side and a woman on the other mostly.

Some of the silhouettes are children - so cute.

And this one is my favorite - I made sure the page had the title of 'Paris' and then stenciled her in dark brown with a little stamp in the corner.

The white ribbon is so pretty! And the back has a similar page from the book, a big stamp of the Eiffel Tower and a postage stamp and mail stamp on it so it looks sort of postcard-like and I imagine an Austen lady that visited Paris one summer and sent back a silhouette to her special someone back home.
I'm putting all of these silhouettes up on Etsy (which made my mother complain as she likes them) and a few are already up now and I'll be adding them tonight and tomorrow. Hope a few of these make it to some loving homes...

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, btw. Got a bit wrapped up in Thanksgiving and then I was sick so I'm just pulling myself together again. ;)