Falabella & Cookies

I love my new Falabella bag! I've been wearing hand held bags for so long that carrying a bag on the shoulder felt a bit weird, and the shoulder muscles got super tight..but I'll get used to it again. (And now I actually have a reason to pamper myself with a massage!) I love the Falabella's size as it fits diapers, wipes, bananas, and all the kid stuff that I carry with me, as well as my own wallet, make-up, etc. It is a pretty big sack, though, so lucky that I'm a big girl. And the color - I love the shimmery tweed and the gold hardware... I think you get the point so enough about that.

It seems to keep with tradition that we don't have time to bake our gingerbread cookies before Christmas. Luckily the dough keeps for a few days in the fridge. So we baked ours yesterday, and then decorated them this morning. I let the kids bake and decorate so the cookies look really home made, but they really enjoy getting to do it themselves. The other tradition is that we share some cookies with our neighbors, wrapped in some cellophane and dropped off by kids to their friends at both neighbors.

I've been experimenting with different recipes, traditional Finnish ones (conversions are tough), and last year I did Mark Bittman's recipe (very gingery). But this year's gingerbread cookies came out really good with a recipe from my new Martha Stewart baking book. This is the recipe that I will use from now on, it's the perfect blend of savory and sweet. And the kids liked them too. It was cute that my 4 year old realized that baking cookies is a tradition too, as she noted that she loves to do this every Christmas...