zero cynicism about pointillism!

Recent events:  I made a vintage cake for a friend's daughter's birthday!  I'm absolutely terrible at cake decorating, but I found a method that's perfect for someone like me:  cake pointillism.  

First, bake cake and lay out your template...in my case, large stickers with the backing still on.

Next, dust on some powdered sugar and remove template...now you can easily see the contrast area that needs to be filled in.

Get your dots going!

It took about 20 minutes or so to fill in the entire cake.

I am definitely going to be doing this a lot more in the future.  

It's been quiet around here.  The Christmas tree is finally out, having shed every single needle before reaching its temporary outdoor resting place.  I've never had a tree (well-watered and bought fresh!) that shed so much!  It is absolutely bare.

Todd has been sick with the flu for nearly a week, so it's been especially quiet.  Pepita has been in charge of both patient care...

...and guard duty...

...leaving her completely exhausted.

Like Todd's flu, it's contagious (I am fully expecting to get sick soon)!

So just staying close to home, enjoying beautiful sunrises...

...and night skies.

When not working on the business, working on puzzles....

Books and puppies!  Puppies and books!

...reading, having nice quiet time...one of the reasons that I love winter.  It's so nice to just be.  No guilt, just a nice slow recharge.  

Pepita agrees.

Have a great week!  

winter peepers

Christmas is over...but it was fantastic while it lasted!

Cookies were baked and distributed...

...and I flavored, split, and rolled special mini batches for us to enjoy a different Christmas cookie every night in the week leading up to Christmas.

Todd had both a daily gift for Advent and a daily joke that he pulled from our wooden calendar with tiny little drawers.

Todd bought me a special Die Hard advent calendar, too!

On Christmas, I got up early and made a cinnamon roll...big enough to fit in a 9" pie pan.

It was an easy, quick rise and I had plenty of time to bake and frost it before Todd was even out of bed!  A perfect Christmas morning treat.  I also made an accompanying apple compote.

Then it was Christmas movies, games, and lots of eating all day long...in our pajamas!  So relaxing.  But Christmas is over and we've slowly been taking the decorations down...much to the dismay of the pets, who love posing in front of the tree.

I've left a few things up that aren't explicitly Christmas, like this winter cross stitch I completed a few years ago.

The weather sure hasn't felt Christmasy.  It's been so warm and hazy.

There were a flurry of pictures on our township Facebook page when this warm front rolled in.  Here is a photo from our back yard!

It reached almost 70 degrees, but what a drop!  Just a few degrees shy of breaking our state record for biggest temperature variance in a 24-hour period.

We took advantage of the warm weather by hiking at one of our favorite winter spots, a nearby bog with a worn wooden pathway above it to help keep our feet mostly dry.

It was nice for a bit of spring weather - complete with our spring peepers chirping every day! - but hopefully we'll have more snow soon.

Have a great week!  

It's beginning to look a lot like...

 It's Christmas week and the snow has been glorious!

 

It got pretty cold...

...but we all managed to stay warm!

I love it so much!

We had some birds at the feeder...

...and MORE birds.

The yard was criss-crossed with animal tracks...rabbit, deer, cat, and more!

I wish it could be like this all winter long...

...but the melt began a few days later.

The snow's all gone now, and we'll be close to 70 degrees for Christmas!

At least we've had a ton of fun with it while we could.

Even those digging paths!  :)  

Have a great week!