Wishing You a Wonderful Holiday

Hi everyone. This is my last post for a few days since tomorrow (the 23rd) I need to get a lot of things finished. That is as long as the heavy winds during the big storm that arrives  tonight don't knock out our power. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't happen. (And luckily we're going to have a short warm up so it will be rain coming in rather than snow, but like the temperatures so many of you are getting, the  bitter cold is coming in right after the storm.)

My daughter is coming tomorrow night, my son-in-law is coming first thing Saturday morning, and Saturday will be our family Christmas. It's a little weird  to celebrate on the 24th since we've always celebrated on the 25th, but now that my daughter is married, we need to be a bit more flexible.  The hubby and I plan a Die Hard movie marathon on the 25th, and we'll be making a nice holiday dinner for just the 2 of us.

I have an art journal page for today which I am linking up to a whole bunch of challenges.

First of all, my page today is for Rain's  Thursday Art and Dinner Date, where the theme is a Christmas scene. As I'm not posting anything new tomorrow, this is also for Nicole's Friday Face Off and I'm also linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break. 

And last but never least, I added some snowflakes and I am linking up to Jo's Snowy Winter challenge at Art Journal Journey

The Santa was on the cover of a Vermont Country Store catalogue I received in the mail. I used my printer/copier to copy him onto  heavier paper, and then I fussy cut him out. I used some spray paint and a stencil to make the background. Santa made me think of children, and even though these 2 vintage cuties look like they are a little afraid of Santa, I added them and made a pile of snow for them to stand on. Perhaps  once Christmas comes and they get a few new toys, they'll  smile. 

I die cut the snowflakes and added them so my page also would work for Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey.

And I have been doing some baking. Last week I made this Scandinavian advent bread from a cookbook I borrowed.

It's made with some butter and milk, as well as white and spelt flour. It actually called for some whole wheat flour, but since I didn't have any on hand I substituted the white. The topping is a maple glaze which was easy and tastes amazing. My maple syrup is on the browner side (the maple sap gets browner as the season goes on) and comes from my son-in-law's family syrup house. His parents gave us a few quarts of fresh maple syrup as I'm not fussy about the color.

I soaked the dried fruit in some vanilla vodka first rather than the sherry the recipe called for. This bread is really moist and delicious. I may have to see if I can find a copy of this cookbook since this bread is so good I want to make it again. Plus there are several other recipes I'd like to try.

I've also been on a cooking baking binge. I know I showed this photo for T this week, but here it is again.

Last Sunday I made a bunch of cookie doughs, and then earlier this week I spent an afternoon making  cookies from the doughs.

From top to bottom in this photo (above) are spritz, festive pecan sandies that I forgot to put the pecans on top, hazelnut balls, sugar cookies and some lime icebox cookies.

I also made some gingerbread dough, but for some reason it just crumbled, and I couldn't roll it out for the cookie cutters. I might have to make that one again because it's my daughter's cookie of choice. 

I really would like to also make some gingerbread (in cake form), but I'm not sure if that will happen or not. If I feel like it maybe on Christmas I'll whip one up in the morning.

(FYI: I'm writing this part Friday morning. We have severe winds right now, some of them over 50 mph, so if I don't get to your blog it's because I've lost power. So far it's hanging on, but it has blinked a couple of times. Keeping my fingers crossed it stays on. I just want to apologize in advance. )

And let me end this post by wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanza.