a peek inside the fishbowl

I made hot chocolate with candy canes, we snacked on bagels and clementines while we worked on our letters. I had a hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick. (My new treat!)

I guess we spent more time munching than writing because the letters aren’t done yet. Here are the drafts. I think they’re pretty good so far.

Click to view full size.

After dinner we watched Shrek the Halls and ate warm banana bread. A pretty good day two.

p.s. this is part of my 25 days of Christmas challenge. It’s never too late to play along!

At the last minute I decided to remake all of our advent envelopes. So last night I spent about 90 minutes with a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a pad of scrapbooking paper. Unfortunately I can’t find our mini-clothespins. I know I put them somewhere safe… hmm…

ANYWAY, I wanted our family to kick off the Christmas season thinking about someone other than ourselves. Today’s advent message was:

Help those who are less fortunate. Choose something from the World Vision catalogue.

The catalogue is online, which is great, because it makes browsing/purchasing very very easy.

In the past we’ve bought roosters and hens (“They get married and make CHICKS, don’t they mummy!”)and fruit trees. The catalogue has a lot of great ideas, so many, in fact, it is difficult to decide what to give. I feel good about the fact that whatever we choose, we’re making the world a tiny bit better.

p.s. this is part of my 25 days of Christmas challenge. It’s never too late to play along!

I have had several deadlines this week, some company (more about that later) and am finally caught up. I can finally tell the story behind the cookies. Phew!

If you followed the comments in that post you probably figured out those cookies weren’t actually made by yours truly.

Awhile back I saw that regular Fishbowl reader Karen started her own home-baking business called Sugarplum Fairy Homebaking. It tweaked my interest, not only because I like to support local mom-run businesses, but because I kind of hate baking. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy cooking and baking bread, but baking batches of Christmas cookies is not something I truly enjoy.

There are several reasons for this:

(1) I don’t have the patience. Rolling, cutting, decorating and icing, ugh!
(2) I don’t have very many good (read: idiot-proof) recipes. I FEAR THE COOKIES.
(3) Shopping for butter and sugar and flour, and then cleaning up bits of butter and sugar and flour that get strewn all over our tiny kitchen and stuck to the bottoms of my socks? In a word: depressing.
(4) When Cookies Don’t Turn Out They Go in the Garbage and this is a Dreadful Waste of Time and Butter

But there was Karen! Like a little ray of homebaked sunshine! Offering her cookies for sale at reasonable prices!

I made her an offer to trade photography for cookies. A pretty sweet (haha) deal, don’t you think?

When Karen came over here to drop off her goods for the photoshoot I learned that I’m the first bloggy friend Karen has ever met in real life!  I think I freaked her out A LITTLE BIT simply because I STARTED TALKING AND WOULD NOT SHUT UP. I think the thought of all those cookies was giving me a premature sugar high.

Karen was perfectly delightful AND she brought us lattes from Bridgehead.

We chatted. She left. And I was left to my own devices with a kitchen counter full of cookies.

This photoshoot was probably my most challenging. I used an oldskool macro lens which is NOT auto-focus. It was manual all the way. There was more setup (I now have a better understanding of food styling) and I also had to take a lot of extra care with focusing. (I think I need to get my eyes checked. I actually found it more difficult to do this than ever before. Ack!)

I spent several hours taking the photos, and then some more time going through the photos in Photoshop and uploading them for her review. By the end of it I was ABSOLUTELY DYING TO EAT A COOKIE. I didn’t dare nibble until I got word from her that the photos were okay. (It was torture.)

Here’s what she brought over :

Bishop’s Hats

Caramel Pecan Cookies

Cherry Squares

Chocolate Mint Truffle Cookies

Gingersnaps

Gumdrop Jewels

Marble Discs

Caramel Toffee Squares

Chocolate Truffles

Shortbread

Drooling yet?

My favourite was a five-way tie between the cherry squares, the truffles, the shortbread, the caramel pecan things and the toffee squares.

You know what is the best thing? Her prices are totally on the mark and YOU CAN PRETEND YOU DID THIS BAKING ALL BY YOURSELF. She promises she won’t tell. Ever. So go check it out.