Boreal Witch

I've heard many people - mothers of teenage children in particular - disagree: Oh, just you wait, they seemed to say, you'll be driving them every which way; to sports, to clubs, to friend's houses...Just you wait.

For the first time, I understand. Besides the piano lessons, Friday playdate, and normal activities, I baked and frosted about six dozen cookies for various Valentine's functions with a little bit of help from the kids, all in the span of three days. 

By the Gods, it was nightmarishly fun. 

I work Monday and Wednesday evenings now, teaching English - it's a funny story, but I won't go into it now - so anything that I need to get done for the evening has to get done the morning or afternoon before. So, all of the cookies I would normally bake at night were cut and baked during the day. 

We made two types of cut cookies: a chocolate brownie cut-out cookie and a regular sugar cookie. There were bits of dough left over from each, so Balin and I mixed them together to create...swirl cookies! 

Some of them weren't all that interesting but others were quite lovely, with cloudy or marbled patterns. Some were black-and-white-tuxedo cookies, the bands of color alluringly bold.

Balin and I bought a small bottle of sprinkles at Aldi's and once the cookies were frosted, the boys took turns decorating those cookies with sprinkles. That was the best part! In fact, Balin wanted to decorate all the cookies for Friday Playdate, too, but since all the cookies we made his friends were swirl cookies the frosting would hide all the pretty patterns. I think he was slightly disappointed.

Blessed be.