The Storm Before the Storm

 Hi all!  Not much to report here this week; it's recital week for my students so my brain is much occupied and the to-do list is long.  I'm super happy with the progress everyone has made doing lessons remotely this fall, so it's a happy busy, but busy nonetheless.  I think I mentioned before that remote recital prep requires a bit more video editing, so it's time consuming.  But the reward is great!

We had a snowstorm here this last weekend, so it was quite literally the storm before my figurative storm of a busy week...

It turned out to be half snow, half rain so the girls were pretty disappointed at the general crustyness the next morning and lack of playable snow.

We made candy cane cookies while it was yucky out, so that was a silver lining!

It is a family tradition (dating back to my own childhood actually) to make these cookies every year, and I have a love/hate relationship with it because they are hands-down my favorite cookies ever, but they are pretty labor intensive to make.  However, in the past two years or so the girls have taken a great interest in the labor intensive part, so that has been AWESOME.  This year I just mixed up the dough, which isn't too hard, and they did 95% of the molding and shaping and baking.  Win win.

Despite this being a family tradition, I don't think I have ever shared the recipe here on the blog??  Well, let's fix that!!!

Candy Cane Cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter*

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp almond extract

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour**

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp red food coloring***

*I sub Earth Balance or Country Crock Plant Butter to make them dairy-free

**I sub gluten-free flour, usually King Arthur blend

***I sub about 2 Tablespoons of beet juice for the red food color.  This makes for pink candy canes instead of the vibrant red of the food color, but artificial red dye makes my kiddos SUPER hyper so we stopped using it

Instructions:

1.  Cream the butter and shortening with confectioner's sugar.  Add the egg, almond and vanilla extract and beat until well combined.  Add the flour and salt and stir until mixture forms a dough.

2.  Divide the dough in half and add the food coloring to one half of the dough, stirring until coloring is even.

3.  Scoop a tablespoon of dough in each color, and roll each into a 2-inch "snake" on a floured surface.  Lay the snakes next to each other and pinch the ends together, then roll each end in opposite directions to twist the snakes.  Form into a candy cane shape and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  (If you're like my girls you can make other shapes too-- braids, balls, hot dogs, snow men with pink eyes, etc.)

4.  Bake at 375 for 9-10 minutes until firm and lightly browned on the bottom.

Since the storm it has been super cold out.  The girls have been dutifully doing their hour-ish of outside time every day but we have had to bundle!  They had their Nature School on Monday (have I mentioned how much we LOVE it?) and went well bundled.  Luckily they played a raucous game of Capture the Flag and took a long hike so they kept their bodies movin' and groovin' and had no troubles staying warm.

We also did some downstairs play area cleaning and re-organizing this past weekend.  I did a huge sweep-up of a lot of dust down there so hopefully C will be better able to play without a sneezing attack.  I admit I have neglected the cleaning down there since living in this house, you know... out of sight, out of mind.

That's the after picture.  The before was much messier.

I also set up this virtual lesson-teaching corner for myself and have been enjoying it a lot.  It's nice to have just one spot for work that's downstairs and removed from everyone else.  Have I mentioned that our upstairs is tiny?  Working and doing school from home at the same time is pretty tough in such a small space.  But we make it work!  Besides being really cold, I love having my own little corner downstairs now.  I just set my laptop (very carefully) up on top of that Lego bin and I'm good to go.  Next project:  locate space heater.

That's all I have time for today!  See you later alligator!