Sunday morning, we woke up to a whirling blizzard of snow and ice. After a momentary panic session triggered by all the things I wasn’t going to get done that day, I mellowed out and accepted our day at home. In fact, it was incredibly liberating to realise that we couldn’t do anything but be together in the house. On a wintry storm day, there was something so cosy about being cooped up together, gazing at the apocalyptic weather from our window.
My husband (see left) bravely fought the weather to get me some coffee filters and soup from the nearby convenience store. My suspicion is that the potential consequences of going outside were still better than facing a day with an uncaffeinated me!
My husband had to work the entire day at his computer in the basement, so the kids and I made a plan of some fun things we could do together. We started the day with some crafts – the painting, gluing and sticking helped in focusing their chaotic energy that was bubbling up uncontrollably without the ability to go outside and run it off. After producing some pretty serious pieces of art, we watched "Curious George" on TV (I love the soundtrack – those Jack Johnson tunes are so mellow and fun!) and then had some fun playtime with our lovely neighbours.
In the evening, I made up some cookie dough and we baked a bunch of holiday cookies. This was a tradition that I used to do with my mother, and it felt wonderful to share those same recipes and fun with my own kids. We baked shortbread (it’s this one from the back of the Canada Corn Starch box, super simple but noone would know how easy they are!) and sugar cookies (there are tons of good recipes on the web – I used this one from the Food Network and it was great), the latter of which we decorated with goopy homemade icing and an array of coloured sprinkles and M&Ms. An interesting point is that it took me approximately an hour to make the dough and set up everything, and the actual decorating activity only took 20 minutes! But, it was worth it and the kids seemed definitely pleased with their sugary creations. Here are some pics of our cookies!
The rolling of the dough…
The fruits of our labour!
Delectable shortbread minis
What did you do on the snowiest of days??
I’m so impressed with your industry and your awesome looking cookies Amreen. We did nothing, absolutely nothing and it was heavenly.
I can almost taste those cookies! mmm-mmm, I remember their creations from last year and these ones look just as good (I like the addition of the m&ms). I was NOT missing the toronto winter in the least until I saw this posting…
Snowiest of days? What’s a snowiest? We don’t know that word around here in Cairo. But I sure like the look of them cookies. And I’m loving your blog. One if these days, I’m going to use one of those recipes.
Wow Amreen! Amazing cookies!!! I’m waaaay to lazy to use a cookie cutter and then icing and sprinkles and whatnot WITH MY KIDS. I admire you for taking it on. And the results are fantastic. We didn’t get any snow here in Calgary. Booo!