Italian Spice Cookie: EPIC FAIL!!!!

Not even close to good. I mean these were so not even close to good as to be beyond bad... I felt so sorry for the wasted ingredients!!!!!

UGH.

We'd roamed the World Wide Web in search of something as good as Tina's mother's recipe. Mind you, it has been YEARS since I ate one, and I was going on memory, and you know what memories can do to a person. So maybe Tina Russo Radcliffe's mother's cookies weren't great at all.

Maybe they were ordinary and I was just starving to death. (By the way, Tina's mother is stinkin' adorable, sweet and so kindly that I just wanted to bundle her up and bring her home with me. Tina refused to let me put her in the car. I'd have brought her back. Eventually!!!!)

Anyway, the kids had Veteran's Day off and we were doing cool things but we needed to give my buddy Christina some baking time. So we did. And so it began:

But first we had to take kitten pics to put the fall kittens on Craigs List:

There are THREE more so our measure of cute knows no bounds.  Stinkin' cute, right?

Okay, back to cookies.

No.

I refuse to go back to cookies. I'm waging war against the cookies! I can't even give them to the dogs because... sigh... they're chocolate.

Okay, enough cookie whining, because look what I had to be grateful for!!!!

THIS!!!

A Box o' Baby!!!!


And then there's THIS!!!!

"I think I'll help Grammy rake some leaves... or possibly fall in the pond. One or the other."

And then there's this bit of amazement taking place in our side yard:

This Santa and NINE FULL SIZED REINDEER are now taking over the side yard. Why, you say? On November 13th?

Well because it was nice out.

'Sall I got. Nice = Get 'er done!

The first year I set up the set, I used little metal stakes and thin wire. BIG MISTAKE. Now they're in the ground with heavy duty wire and rope and the biggest stakes I could find at Home Depot...

But today's winds said these babies aren't flying or tipping this year!!!

That's 'Lijah, our friend Angie and Finn, sittin' in the sleigh. Great-grandma Blodgett and Great Uncle Chuck made this set probably fifteen to twenty years ago. It used to be set up in their big front yard, and then when their health prevented putting the set out, Santa and his buds languished in Uncle Chuck's big barn....

And when the time came to clear out the barn and sell the small farm they called home, I was amazed that no one wanted Santa & Co.

I did!!!!  :)

And so Santa came here in several pick-up truck loads, and when he's not in the yard, he and his friends rest and recupe in our shed... The WHOLE shed. It takes the whole shed to keep them safe all year.

SO FUNNY!!!! But it's Cadillac housing for a beloved project.

So while the cookies were a bust.... sadly.... We went and got cider-glazed fried cakes from R&K Zarpentines, a jug of fresh cider and smiles at Santa and his friends.

This weekend I'll hook up the lights we use as "reins" and a couple of spotlights in the yard... and it's a Merry Christmas display for so many!