Christmas Eve Cookies

On Christmas Eve in Iowa, Kimberly brought out the blank Christmas cookies for decorating. Icing came in three colors of squeeze tubes and there were sprinkles of every variety. Allie Rose turned a snowman cookie into the bloodiest Santa Claus with a green beard. She glopped the icing on with zealous glee. She was encouraged to be more conservative with her icing but her style was thick and gloppy.

Kimberly clearly has an artistic streak because her cookies turned out being maser pieces. The biggest tree cookie was meant to be a cookie decorated by everyone at the table, but Kim decorated is so beautifully that no one else dared touch it. I decided to add one ornament as my contribution. Pam decorated a tree cookie with a Zorro slash of red ribbons and some very fancy snow flake sprinkles for ornaments.

Destiny also had a real knack for decorating cookies. Hers were well though out and cleanly executed. The candy cane had just the right mix of red and green stripes, and a snowman’s smile had 5 individual green sprinkles to represent his teeth.

I decided to decorate a cookie myself after the sketch was done. The cookie looked like a thought bubble. I had no idea exactly what it was meant to be, so I ended up creating a rather abstract cookie with a green Grinch face at the center. I later found out that the cookie was supposed to be shaped like Santa’s head which makes sense in hind sight. I didn’t actually eat any of these cookies, but I bet Allie’s Bloody Santa cookie was the sweetest of all. This was a fun and creative family activity that I enjoyed documenting and participating in.

White Christmas.

Pam Schwartz and I are in Iowa for Christmas. On Christmas Eve
it started to snow and it snowed all day long. I set some time aside to paint
the view out of some bay windows that overlooked the property. The house is on
top of a hill that overlooks all the land around it. There is a pond down at
the bottom of the ravine in the direction that I was painting. There was a fine
dusting of snow all day. I was pleased to find out that there was a brush on
the tablet that easily paints snow. 

The Christmas tree had been set up with care and the next morning
the presents under and next to the tree would be unwrapped. All the open fields
became white encrusted in the snow as we rode to grocery stores for holiday
supplies. On Christmas Eve evening we had a 15 pound NY strip loin roast that was amazingly
tender along with cheesy potatoes and green beans with bacon. I gave Pam’s brother
credit for a pan full of roasted water chestnuts wrapped in bacon that were delicious, that had really been made by Pam. 

Relatives come and go in waves and the family chats in the
living room, warm from the snow outside. We often gather at the table to play
board games. The sun has just set and online sites track Santa’s progress
around the world. His sleigh seems to always be in flight. He never seems to
and drop off presents. There is only an electric fireplace here in Maquoketa, so he must
have to be good at breaking into homes to drop off his presents.