Holidays – Flamingo House Happenings

The Sugar Cookie That Saved My Life

Daily Dose, Family Funk, Foodie, Holidays / denise

Originally published on BlogHer many, many years ago.

When I was a kid, I loved making Christmas cut-out cookies. I loved helping my mom make the dough, the recipe we used came from the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. I loved rolling out the dough and placing our small supply of holiday cookie cutters in exactly the right places to cut out the shapes. I loved decorating them — either with icing or without. The only problem with those sugar cookies was that I did not like to eat them and neither did anyone else in my family. We ate them but we did not love them — which might be why my mother did not let us make them every year.

When I had kids of my own, I bought a bunch of holiday cookie cutters and introduced them to the joys of the sugar cookie. Like me, they loved making the cookies but they did not like eating them. Still — it was a tradition. It was something they really loved to do, so we kept making them.

Over the years, I made those sugar cookies with my kids, with neighbor kids, with Girl Scout troops and Cub Scout dens. I even took the pre-baked cookies into classrooms and we made fun cookie decorating messes in classrooms all over the world.

I thought I’d spend the rest of my life making Christmas sugar cookies that nobody liked. I had resigned myself to nibbling on cookies made by children, faking the joy until the child turned her back and I could toss the cookie into the trash… until that wonderful day, when a book changed my life.

I wish I remembered more about what led me to buy Leisure Arts’ Christmas Gifts of Good Taste. I was probably looking for some new craft ideas for projects I could do with my Girl Scouts or with my kids. This was way back in 1991, before the internet made it so much easier to find new ideas — back when you ordered books out of magazines or from book clubs and prayed the book had something in it you could use. This book has a beautiful cover, and I’m a sucker for good covers, so that’s probably what pushed me into placing the order.

I do remember receiving the book and opening it for the first time. It was late fall in Northern California. The weather was glorious and we were beginning to think about the holidays. I was excited to try several of the recipes in the book and make a lot of the crafts. My kids and my next door neighbor (and her kids) were equally excited by the idea. Both households went to work — the kids made felt Santa puppets, angel gift bags and Santa cookies (made out of Nutter Butters.) If you wander through my house, you might find some handwritten holiday recipe cards made that fall by my neighbor and her children. Every time I see those cards, I remember that time in our lives and I quietly celebrate the book that changed our lives because in that book is THE sugar cookie recipe.

I clearly remember looking at the recipe and wondering “Who puts mint in a sugar cookie?” I shrugged and headed off to the commissary because these cookies were so pretty that I had to make them.

I made the dough by myself, without the help of children. I cut the Christmas light pattern out of cardstock while the dough was chilling. I carefully cut the cookies, by this time the children were very interested in what I was doing. I sent them away and told them we’d make their sugar cookies next. When the cookies were cool, I iced them by myself with homemade red and green and blue icing — and they were beautiful.

I never expected to love these cookies. I never expected the children to devour them. I really did not expect the neighbor children (or their mother) to return my plate, empty, within 15 minutes of having sent it over. I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d be in the process of making a double batch of that recipe before I even cleaned up from the first batch. Those cookies… they were that good. I’ve never considered trying another recipe. Ever. There’s no need, I’ve found perfection.

I’ve carried this recipe with me all over the country (and the world) and I’ve always had rave reviews — even when the cookies were decorated by pre-schoolers with germy fingers. I’ve shared the recipes with friends online and always had rave reviews. Every fall, someone emails me or messages me asking me for the recipe. When I met TW’s children, they’d never experienced the joy of the sugar cookie (TW is not a fan) and they were immediately converted to mint sugar cookie lovers. Our holiday would not be complete without this cookie — it’s not just the fun they have sitting around the table together, making anatomically correct snowmen and gingerbread girls. It’s that they actually LIKE to eat them.

Mint Sugar Cookies

For cookies, cream butter and sugars in a large bowl until fluffy. Add egg and mint, beating until smooth. In another bowl, sift flour and baking soda. Stir the flour (and nuts if you use them, yuk!) into the creamed mixture until soft dough forms. (And if I’m honest, I’ll admit to quite often NOT sifting because who has time to sift when you have a zillion kids wanting to make cookies?? Hasn’t ever hurt the cookies to not sift… just sayin’.) Cover and chill for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350. On a lightly floured surface, use a rolling pin (or the heels of your hand like I do, lol) to roll out the dough to 1/4″ thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut cookies and back for 8-10 minutes or until light brown. Cool on a wire rack.

For icing, beat sugar and milk in a large bowl until smooth. Divide icing into small bowls and tint with food coloring. Spread icing on the cookies and allow the icing to harden (if your cookie eaters don’t eat them first!)

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

3/4 cup of butter (or margarine), softened
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon mint extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup finely ground walnuts (I leave these OUT)

Icing (I rarely make icing anymore…)

5 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
Paste food coloring

A sugar cookie everyone loves… who would have guessed it? (Oh. Wait. There is one hold out — TW has still never tasted one of these cookies. She swears she won’t like it. Her loss, more for us!) This is also the cookie that is causing my vegan child angst this year… so we’re going to try a vegan version and see what happens — fingers crossed!

~Denise

BlogHer Community Manager

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Thanksgiving Shopping

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Holidays / denise

I’m thankful for stores and restaurants that are open on Thanksgiving — very thankful.

Jenn, Ted and JMP are in Hawaii. Chris is in Charleston. Michelle is in Philadelphia (and worked today.) The little kids are with their dad. Which means, today was not our Thanksgiving in the traditional sense of the word.

It was our traditional Christmas shopping day, though, and I’m very thankful for all of the stores that were open today.

We hit Starbucks for holiday coffee — where I put my traditional $40 into the tip jar (and we gave one of our favorite baristas a holiday gift.)

We dropped TW’s mom off at the nursing home so that she could spend the day with TW’s sister.

We went to Kmart, as usual. It’s not nearly as much fun to shop at Kmart now that our kids are grown up. There’s just not much there that any of them want or need. We bought some things, though nothing “fun” by TW’s definition.

Then we went to Walgreens for our traditional Thursday freebies run — the most exciting purchases there were cheap toilet paper and laundry detergent. Nothing fun, again — but we have a ton of RRs that TW can use this weekend to buy alllllll of the fun stuff she wants.

Next stop CVS where we bought more cheap laundry detergent and used all of our ECBs on holiday candy and a few holiday things.

Then we went home where I talked to Jenn and Facetimed with JMP while he opened his Elf on the Shelf present.

We were going to take a nap but we’d forgotten to put the quilt in the dryer so… hard to nap in this freezing house with no quilt… we went off to Big Lots where we thought we might find a trunk for RJ, but did not. Instead we found a ton of Bob’s Red Mill stuff at about half the price we normally pay for it. That was a big, unexpected win.

And, we drove through Burger King for lunch — mistake. The awesome fries we had from the BK in front of our neighborhood were not to be found at the BK on Golf Rd. Blech. I think we may never go to BK again… blech.

Then it was home for a nap before we headed back to pick up TW’s mom.

Dinner was a nice chicken breast with some cranberry something or other while we fought over the advertisements from today’s newspaper and joked about camping out in front of the Petsmart tonight so we were first in the door tomorrow morning. Hah.

I talked to Michelle on the phone for a bit and I’ve cleaned the kitchen. If I was a little more motivated, I might wrap a few gifts but I’m not, so I won’t. We’ll watch a little TV and read for the rest of the night and call this non-Thanksgiving a success.

Because it was. Even with the bad BK for lunch.

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Fifty

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Friends & Family, Holidays / denise

Oy, this is not the 50th birthday post I thought I’d write back when I didn’t have a PUPPY (or a house full of puppies) but this is pretty much all I have energy (and concentration) for.

It was a very busy day. But also a nice day.

Buster keeps jumping into my lap and grabbing my arm while I type. If you’d told me yesterday that he’d be doing that today, I would not have believed it. I also probably wouldn’t have believed Skeeter would have taught him to counter surf or that Lola would have taught him to dig very deep holes in the backyard. I did, however, expect the vet to say he had worms — which did happen. So yay all of the dogs get to enjoy canned dog food in celebration of my birthday.

I never expected JMP would have finger painted pictures for me, though I suppose I should have — his mother is, after all, my daughter. I can’t wait to have the real things in my hands… good thing I hadn’t done anything with the ones he painted for me last month, now I can frame them all at the same time.

I did expect wonderful birthday wishes from my Facebook friends but it’s always a lot of fun to see them roll in, anyway. I didn’t have nearly enough time to thank everyone, individually, but I really did appreciate all of your good wishes.

I enjoyed my Smashburger dinner with TW and her mom — there’s not enough lime soda in my life, I should change that because my Green River float was awesome, (and the black bean burger was fabulous, too.)

All in all, fifty feels pretty darn good. Now I’m off to collapse into my bed with a pack of wild hounds and a book that I really want to finish tonight.

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Senility Has Set In

2 Comments / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays, Pets / denise

I’ll be 50 on Monday and I was feeling just fine with that. But now I’m a little concerned. My mind, my senses, it’s all going. I need someone to THINK because I’m apparently unable to do so, any more.

Obviously.

Since I asked for a puppy for my birthday.

And got him.

This is Buster, formerly known as Hamlet.

So maybe I haven’t completely lost my mind. He needed us to adopt him after the horrible bus accident. Watching him in a crate with his brother, before they’d let people into the tent area to check out the adoptable dogs — it was heartbreaking to see him just lay there. He didn’t move. He didn’t look around. He didn’t even think about barking.

HEARTBREAKING.

He’s very afraid of people. A little shy around the dogs (especially Lola). Did I mention it’s heartbreaking? But there’s a spark in him, you can see it when he’s outside with the dogs. He really, really wants to play with them. He thought he was awesome sauce when he snuck up on Skeeter (who was peeing at the time) and nothing bad happened.

Maybe I’m not senile, just a little softhearted?

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It’s Official. I Prefer the Empty Nest

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays / denise

I’ve decided to cancel all holidays unless we have three or more of the six kids (and/or their friends and/or JMP) in attendance. I much prefer the empty nest and let’s just skip all of the traditional stuff over the a couple kids are here so we’ll do the whole thing stuff.

With just the two little girls here, it was far too quiet. The kitchen never got messy. Never. Not once. I barely had enough dishes this morning to run the load. I don’t have enough dinner dishes to run a load tonight. That’s madness. Really.

And everything just feels off without a house-full.

It wasn’t a bad Easter, not at all. We laughed a lot. We ate great food, (including asparagus that the girls and I fought over…RJ doesn’t even LIKE asparagus and I think she had three helpings.) But… yea.

No Prince J. No Michelle-Belle. No Chris. No Jenn. No JMP. No stray kids showing help. Hell, even TW’s mom was gone.

Bah humbug. Some people had better show up for the next holiday or I’m cancelling it.

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Just Say “Green”

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays, Memories / denise

When I was a kid, I’d ask my mom what her favorite color was. Sometimes because we were going to play a board game with a colored game token and she needed to choose a color. Sometimes because it’s a question kids like to ask… “What’s your favorite….”

Sometimes my mother would say something like, “I don’t know, just pick one for me.” Or “I don’t care.” Or just “I don’t know, what’s your favorite color?”

Those answers were obviously inappropriate and I would argue, tell her she had to pick one, and otherwise boss her into choosing. That’s what kids do.

And so, my mother would answer “green”. Every time.

As I got older, I was very sure my mother’s favorite color was green. Even now, if you asked me what her favorite color might be, I would immediately say “green”. If I’m looking for a gift for my mom that comes in different colors, I immediately gravitate toward green, though I know that this is silly. She might like green but it’s not really her favorite color in every situation. It never was. It was the answer she gave because, as a mom, it was a good, easy answer.

When I became a mom and was faced with the same questions from my kids, I’ve done it a little differently.

“Which color do you want to be?” I would choose green, unless I knew that a child playing would choose green (which was rare.)

“What’s your favorite color?” led me to respond with, “I don’t have a favorite color.” or “I like a lot of colors and it depends on why you’re asking.” But yes, my fall back if forced to choose a color for any question a child asks has always been green.

Because that’s what my mom said and my mom was smart.

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Ducks Are For Carrying?

Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays, Pets / denise

I forgot to check the front patio for packages yesterday so I wasn’t surprised to find a couple of package sized envelopes sitting on the patio this morning. However, I was surprised to see that one of those envelopes was for Skeeter, from Duncan.

You remember Duncan, right? She’s my mom’s dog? The one I dog-sat last year? The one who doesn’t bark? Right — that Duncan.

You might also remember that my mother left me a very, very long printed list of instructions for taking care of Duncan, Miss Priss, the fish, the plants, and the house. Most of the instructions were related to Duncan and one of the line items was something like…

“After you come home, she’ll grab her duck and carry it around the house for awhile.”

And it’s true. Duncan did that.

What’s also interesting is that Skeeter does this too. Or something very similar.

If we leave her at home, she will grab a stuffed toy of some sort and carry it around the house for awhile after we get home.

It’s cute. Even if Skeeter’s babies are a lot more dead than Duncan’s duck.

Anyway, back to the package for Skeeter.

I decided to hand her the envelope to see what she’d do with it.

Duh. How dumb was that? She started chewing it. And eating the paper.

So I took the big envelope away and found a Christmas gift bag inside (which caused me to kind of roll my eyes) so I handed the gift bag to Skeeter to see what she’d do. (Right, that’s me, still being dumb.)

She started eating the gift bag. She did not particularly care what was in the gift bag, she was happy to eat the little rope handle and the tape and the tag and just the whole bag really.

I decided I’d better put a stop to that paper eating thing, so I nudged the bag and the real present fell out.

A duck! Like Duncan’s!

Skeeter loved it. For the three minutes it too, her to rip a hole in it and strip the squeaker.

And pull out all of the stuffing and bury it in the yard (briefly) so Koto couldn’t play with it.

Seriously. Three minutes.

She still loves the Duncan duck but not as much as she loved it while she was destroying it.

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The Best Laid Plans … Get Shot to Hell

4 Comments / Christmas, Family Funk, Holidays, Kid Talk / denise

I woke up this morning with a good long list of things I was going to accomplish before the little kids showed up at around 11am-ish.

1) Fold laundry and get more laundry into the washer/dryer.
2) Unload/load the dishwasher.
3) Get some work done.
4) Take some stuff out to both cars (a bag of odds and ends from my old car — things like lip balm, bandaids, pens, notepads, etc. and the battery charger & emergency kit for the Funhouse car.)
5) Dump the dead pumpkin on the porch.
6) Get the Flamingo Santa to stop blowing off the porch.
7) Move the Gazelle into Prince J’s room.
8) Get some odds & ends out of the living room/dining room so there’s room for the tree and Christmas decorations.
9) Put the rake and hedge clippers into the garage.
10) Make the surprisingly good salad and deviled eggs for our Thanksgiving dinner.
11) Get the tree put together in the stand and the box carried out to the garage.

I did all of those things, except #s 10 & 11 by about 10:15 (except the rake/clippers were in front of the garage, waiting for me to open the garage and put the Christmas tree box in there…)

At 10:15 I told TW I was going to make the surprisingly good salad and deviled eggs but first I was going to put the tree together. She laughed and said she’d been thinking about doing that, too. So we got to work on that together. All of the pieces were out and TW got the first piece into the stand. As we’re both reaching for the next pieces, I noticed my piece had some fur stuck to some branches. “Oh. Someone made a nest in our tree…”

I went into the kitchen to get a plastic bag and a towel to clean that up and as I was cleaning it, TW said someone had nested in her piece, too. About that time, I noticed not only nesting material but the creature that nested had snacked on some of the wires (it’s a pre-lit tree.)

Hell.

I said, “I guess if we plug this in we’ll either short out the whole house or catch the house on fire, right?”

TW said, “Right.” and suggested we just put strands of lights on it and not use the pre-lit strands. This caused me to roll my eyes. We really want a tree with six strands of dead lights and six strands of live lights. That will look awesome, won’t it? No. Not happening.

I wondered whether we could strip the pre-lit strands off… TW said it would take a long time. I fiddled with one and realized she was right.

Hell.

It was 10:25. I jumped online to see who had trees on sale… everybody has trees on sale, but would they have the size/type we want? No way to know except to get in the car and find out.

Target is closest so we jumped in the car and by 10:40 we were checking out but we did not have a tree. They only had a tiny tree with multi-colored lights. (I impulse purchased a couple of things and since there was no line to check out, I went ahead and bought them.)

We dashed across the street to Lowes. They had trees but nothing we loved that wasn’t $400. I convinced TW that we should get the 6′ multi-colored tree for less than $100 since we have a puppy who eats everything. We’d be a lot less annoyed if she ate a cheap tree than if she ate a $400 tree. TW reluctantly agreed — she had little choice since we had to get the tree done TODAY before Prince J goes back to college.

We got it home and it was TINY and we were all getting really depressed. I sent RJ up to Elly’s room for the LACK table to stand it on, thinking if we made it look like it was taller, we’d like it better. And we do, but it’s still tiny and not full and not a tree we love. We only put about 1/3 of the normal ornaments on it because it’s just so small.

And, we have to figure out how to keep the tree on the table with a hyper puppy around. So far, she’s been relatively good but as soon as we turn our backs, I know she’s going to go for the tree. It’s a lot more interesting than slippers or the couch or any other things she consistently chews on when we turn our backs.

I did manage to get the surprisingly good salad and eggs done while Prince J and TW drove across town to pick up the annoying, evil 14 year old who refused to go to breakfast with the rest of her family this morning so was not dropped off here when her dad dropped her siblings off. (I hate 14 year old girls.)

We managed to celebrate Prince J’s 19th birthday (he got his first iPhone, yay!) and celebrate Thanksgiving and get everything cleaned up from the tree decorating, birthday celebrating and Thanksgiving celebrating in record time.

I even found the missing reindeer stocking for Johnny Mac Pippin.

Let’s call today a win, even if it wasn’t as perfectly managed as I had planned.

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Thanksgiving Tradition: Shopping!

Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays / denise

I got into the habit of shopping on Thanksgiving when I lived overseas. I’d usually spend the morning with my family, we’d eat an early dinner at around 2pm and then I’d head out to do some shopping while folks lounged in front of the TV watching football (which I did NOT want to watch) or hung out with their friends (which I did not need to supervise.)

It was a really nice way to get a jump start on holiday shopping — a Thursday afternoon is not generally high shopping time in either Panama or the Philippines, so it was fabulous. No crowds. No kids.

TW and I started doing Thanksgiving day shopping but we’d do it in the morning while the teens were sleeping and the little kids were lounging around with legos or books or a movie on TV. A trip to the drugstore for stocking stuffers on Thanksgiving morning was a great way to knock out some shopping without a lot of stress. When we realized that K-mart was also open on Thanksgiving, that just made things all the better. Holiday pajamas, socks, dvds, odds and ends that just jumped into the cart — no crowds, no kids. It was fabulous.

A couple of hours of early morning shopping, then we head home for an hour nap. Afterwards, we’re up and cooking, hanging with kids (if they’re here), pulling out holiday decorations, and just generally kicking off the winter holiday knowing that we’ve gotten a nice bit of holiday shopping out of the way and we didn’t have to fight the crowds to do it.

Thanksgiving is one of the few days a year that I actually look forward to shopping. No joke — it’s stress-free shopping and I love it.

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Pinterest, Pumpkins & Puppies: Pft!

3 Comments / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Holidays, Kid Talk / denise

The girls have so many activities that it’s rare for us to be able to do anything that isn’t related to driving them around town or picking them up again so when we found ourselves with about eight free hours one Saturday morning, I knew we had to find something fun to do.

But what? With a puppy who doesn’t necessarily do well home alone for eight hours, our choices were limited. It was October and we didn’t have a pumpkin. And, we needed at least one pumpkin so I could try to make this melted crayon pumpkin project that someone saw on Pinterest and tried, which led TW to send it to me, which led to me wanting to try it.

A perfect storm of madness.

I searched high and low for a pumpkin patch or a farm that welcomed dogs. (Apparently most places like this don’t welcome dogs, in part because the dogs who live on those farms don’t like strange dogs visiting, which I can understand, really.) When I found one about a half hour away that welcomed dogs and had lots of other activities, including a corn maze with a theme of 100 years of Girl Scouting I knew this was the one.

It was fate and a perfect storm of madness.

We woke Elly up early and loaded her and the dog into the car. Elly forgot her iPhone which meant that every five minutes she asked “Are we there yet?” or made some comment about how far away pumpkin patches were.

We parked. We paid. We walked over to the little mini zoo and laughed while an alpaca stared down the puppy and the puppy cowered in fear.

We wandered into the corn maze where Elly decided the best course of action was to let the dog decide which way we’d go. It wasn’t long before I decided that was a stupid idea and headed off in a different direction, assuming Elly was right behind me. She, err, wasn’t. I shrugged and kept walking. Then I remembered she didn’t have her phone and we might never find her again. So I punched a couple of spots on my card and called TW to see if she had seen the kid. She had. But then I had to figure out how to get back to them. We (obviously) figured it out and decided we’d had enough corn maze. (A real shame since TW and Elly both love them so much.)

We were hungry so we headed to the refreshment stand — oops, it wasn’t open yet.

So we headed to the bathrooms. Those were open.

We wandered around a little and then headed back to the refreshment stand which was open — you could tell by the long damn line of people. I waited in line for TW’s donuts and coffee and Elly’s elephant ear. We got our food just in time for the pig races.

Skeeter loved those but the bees loved Elly and her elephant ear and that landed in the mud. Skeeter hated the zip line so TW decided not to ride that. Instead, she bounced on some big bounce thing (much to Elly’s horror) and she and Elly both climbed into some funky tubes and tried to take the dog with them. That was funny. Errr until it started rolling and they all three started flying all over the tube.

Elly climbed up on a John Deere (she looks like she was born to drive one, doesn’t she) and then we picked out some pumpkins and headed home where the real fun happened, though Elly and TW did kind of whine about not getting enough time in the corn maze.

We all stripped the paper off of a box of crayons and then I went in search of some glue. We didn’t have any hardcore glue so we tried… Elmer’s School Glue. Which didn’t work so well.

TW insisted we should just put the pumpkin into the oven and let the crayons melt that way. We tried it but the crayons were almost touching the top of the oven and I was afraid we were going to set them on fire — so we pulled it out and I grabbed the hot glue gun and re-glued everything while Elly took a quick shower (She was covered in mud!)

The hot glue gun did work better but good grief we made a mess and it took for-freaking-ever to get the crayons to melt at all, much less melt and drip down the side of the damn pumpkin.

In the end, Elly really liked the way they turned out and I thought they were pretty darn good — all things considered.

The key here is … have the right kind of glue and DO THIS OUTSIDE while wearing clothes that you don’t mind being covered in melted crayon. We’ve still got melted crayon on the wood floors in the kitchen and I’m not sure it all came out of Elly’s pajamas (which she put on over her clothes after her shower.)

The next time I think about doing some Pinterest project, someone should just say “melted crayon pumpkins” so I remember just how much trouble these things are. We will definitely go back to the pumpkin patch, Elly and TW love those corn mazes.

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