Between yesterday and today I baked four batches of cookies, with two more made up and in the fridge.
Three of them were fairly simple, but one batch called for pistachio nuts. The only ready-to-eat nuts I could find were finished with sea salt – not exactly suitable for cookies – so I bought a bag of nuts in the shell. The Squire and I worked for about a half an hour to shell those blessed things, but a couple just weren’t budging, so the squirrels got them. They seemed to really enjoy them, too. I just hope they don’t think we’re going to do this often; that was a pretty pricey treat!
I was bragging here a few days ago that I had gotten all of our Christmas cards/invitations addressed, but then they got left in the Squire’s car and not mailed. However, this was a blessing in disguise! When The Squire set up to send out a blanket email to the folks at church, he asked me if I had decided to only have the Open House for two hours instead of the usual four.
“Say what?”
“Well, you have it listed as 2 until 4. We normally do it from 2 until 6.”
So – we had to pry open every single card and make the correction by hand, then try to reseal the envelopes.
I hate when that happens.
thisendoftheswamp 
Alyssa was just talking about your open houses and helping out. She was talking about sneaking Blazer a few morsels. After her finals, we will be working on cookies; we are trying to equal your raspberry streusel bars. She has a new favorite jelly that we might try using–F.R.O.G. jelly (fig, raspberry, orange and ginger).
Haven’t made the Streusel bars yet; they don’t keep well, so I’ll probably make them up on Saturday.
Oh, you are doing so good…We haven’t even taken our picture for the Christmas cards yet. 😉