This lovely cake was recently devoured at a work double-shower for a co-worker and myself. Baby Kline & Baby Peek should be making their appearances in January and February respectively, and were both blessed with lots of great baby gear today. This was my first shower, and I got away without any ridiculous games, which I've always enjoyed from the other side of the belly. I wonder if we'll have them at other showers and how I'll like them when it's my belly being measured by the yard...

A Christmas Tradition

Every year when I was a kid, mom would make mountains of sugar cookie cutouts and we would make an unholy mess frosting them. I don't remember too many other goodies appearing year after year, but Mary's Sugar Cookies were a yuletide staple. Once I moved away and didn't have mom's baking close at hand, I had to learn how to make these treats myself. I just made my first batch last night to share with co-workers. Nothing makes me feel like Christmastime is here like baking, frosting and eating these cookies!

These aren't squishy cookies, but crisp and light and thin. Not "lite" however. We always make multiple colors of icing and assign each color a different flavor (mint, vanilla, almond, etc), but you can do whatever sounds good!

Mary's Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups powdered/confectioner's sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cream of tartar

Directions

In a larger bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and extracts. Combine flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; blend into the creamed mixture. Cover and chill for at least two hours.

Preheat the oven to 375. Divide the dough into two parts. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece of dough to 3/16 inch thickness. Cut into fun shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 1/2 inches apart onto cookie sheets. If you like sprinkles, dust the cookies with sprinkles before baking.

Bake for 8 minutes or until lightly browned (air bake pans seem to take a bit longer). Allow cookies to cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before placing on a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

All done!

Just little things left to do in this room now!

Hard wood

Can I say how grateful we are for people with skills? Not nunchuck skills or bowhunting skills, but home-repair skills.

Our friend Petru has hardwood skills. We got a sweet deal on some red oak to install in the dining room, but without Petru's mad skills it would have taken us a century to get our floor in, and I'm sure it wouldn't have looked as good!

Here are some in-progress pics. As soon as everything's done, we'll show you our new gorgeous floor!

Fun with paint

How exciting! For those of you who have consistently asked us, "How's it going with the house?", we have good news! The ugly room became the psycho ward and is now well on its way to being our dining room and office space. Chris has tirelessly sanded, mudded, sanded and sanded again the many drywall seams in the back room (with very little help from this traveling pregnant lady), and he finished up last week.

What's after mudding and sanding? Priming and painting of course. So I went to our second home, er, Home Depot, and picked up a few more supplies and away we went! With the help of some lovely friends our once wood-paneled and ceiling-tiled room has been transformed.

Next up, new wood floors! We thought about keeping the creepy asbestos tile, but thought it might not be safe for Jonathan, and so have opted instead to install some oak. Pray that it will be done by Thanksgiving (our goal), or that the Lord would use its delay to sanctify us.

This long process of home renovation has certainly brought with it trials and temptations, but has also challenged both of us to be thankful and grateful for what we do have. We've got a little over three months until Jonathan is due, and are looking forward to making our house a home before then. Thanks so much to everyone who has helped and/or encouraged us in this process!

This color is Aztec Gold. I asked Chris what beverage he would use to describe it and he answered, "Mt. Dew." Obviously the fella's not a soda drinker. It kind of reminds me of cider. Mmm...cider.

You can't really tell by this picture, but Chris is using his go-go gadget arms to reach a ridiculously awkward corner.

For all of you worried about Jonathan's IQ, I did wear a mask (most of the time) so J's brain should be fine!

Slowly a nursery

Sorry to disappear from blog land again! I'd like to say that I'm turning over a new leaf and will post an insightful, witty and wonderful blog every week or so, but haven't I made promises like that before?

I have been busy traveling for work and Chris has been plugging away at his studies and the re-crafting of our new little home, so really, life has been too dull to blog about anyway ;).

In fact, we've had lots and lots to think about between our little Jonathan (yep, that's his name!), finding a clean and relatively put-together location for him in our home once he arrives, sorting through the rubble of home makeover to do our daily living, future planning, craft projects, prenatal workouts, cloth diaper research and all of the other things that go along with being new homeowners, grown ups and soon-to-be parents. Sometimes its hard to know where to begin a blog!

Pictures are always helpful. So here is the first glimpse of Jonathan's future room. Yes, the room may still be chock full of office supplies, random furniture, my wardrobe and all kinds of other odds and ends, but doesn't this curtain make it more cheerful and somehow...hopeful? You know, this poor neglected room is finally able to hope for a better life--a life as a nursery.

I found this funky fabric at IKEA (very nearly my favorite place) and it made me think of big fuzzy caterpillars. Every little boy loves bugs, so a caterpillar window dressing seemed in order.

It's a start. We've got almost forever until our little J-man comes, so we can take our time nesting, right?

It's a...