A week off.

I've had a lot of time off due to the holidays and it's extremely refreshing. We've been to a lot of family get togethers, had some of our closest friends stay at our house, enjoyed slow mornings together and spent a lot of time working on the house. Here are a few moments.

Oh, and the decision to paint my studio floor white evolved into us tearing down the carpet squares covering every surface, and tearing down a sagging plaster wall, and learning drywall skills. I suppose a before and after will be in order once it's all done. 

The struggle with the spritz cookies.

Spritz cookies are my dad's favorite. Spritz cookies are a struggle.

Over the years we have learned that there are three variables that can go horribly wrong when making spritz cookies. Number one - the cookie press/gun. Number two - the dough consistency. Number three - the flavor of the dough. Failure to succeed at any of these variables can result in: hand cramps, crumbly cookies, cookies in the shape of mushed blobs, cookies with too much almond flavor, cookies with no flavor, or a wasted hour of your life.

This year we went through three guns and in the end decided to finally retire one of them. And after a couple of sheets of un-recognizeable, but tasty, cookies blobs we finally succeeded in making a few trays of perfectly wonderful spritz cookies.

Blanket of white.

Even though I was running a few minutes late for work this morning, I stopped to snap some pictures of the blanket of white.