I did some more baking recently (sugar cookies and chocolate chip & oatmeal cookies). I made another batch of sugar cookies, but because I used smaller cookie cutters (the dinosaur ones are about double the size of my Christmas-themed cutters), I got almost 11 dozen cookies out of one batch of dough. The recipe is really for half of that (if you use cutters in the size it calls for). Nom nom, cookies are delicious. Too bad I don’t get to eat as much as I’d like – nobody in my family helps with baking or decorating, but they insist on giving them away. “Oh, Michelle baked cookies. Good, I need to bring cookies for a pot luck” or “Oh good! You baked! I need to give something to someone for Christmas!”.

I also did some knitting. I’ve been spending some time watching some favourite movies that I hadn’t seen in a while (the entire trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of Black Pearl, The Princess Bride) and then some tv shows (The Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy). Good fun all around.  I’m getting quite a bit of knitting done – here’s what I did on the 18th:

And here is what I had on December 25th (yesterday):

Christmas was primarily uneventful in my house! My family isn’t the kind to go all out. Yes, we generally have an artificial tree up (this year we didn’t because I was the only one willing to put it up!), and I do a all the baking. Which is fitting as I was the one who received baking goodies for Christmas this year! I got 2 Wilton cookie sheets (or pans, whatever you want to call them) and 2 Wilton mini muffin/cupcake tins (in total I can made 2 dozen mini muffins). I am going to have to buy mini muffin liners, but I’m excited for that. I also got the Wilton 3-in-1 cake caddy. Which was great fun!

There were a lot of great sales today. My personal favourite purchases from today included a Monster High doll (Venus McFlytrap) that was 50% off ($14.99) and some adorable prints ($3.99 for the cupcakes and $2.79 for the castle). Oh! Also the four-pack of Kinder Surprise – $2.67 for the 4 when it was also $0.89/ea. (Did you know there’s pink Kinder Surprise eggs now? Pink because all the toys inside are “Just for girls!”)

My online Boxing “Day” shopping was taken care of on December 24th. My parents paid for a new laptop for me (!) as mine (a 5 year old HP DV6000-series laptop) is currently dying… I’ve experienced Blue Screens lately that haven’t entirely rendered me unable to restart the computer, but still – Blue Screens (of Death) are not good when I haven’t made any hardware or software changes (and my anti-virus isn’t being triggered by anything). I’ll be getting an ASUS S series ultrabook (running Windows 8) – it’s only 2 kg – 4.4lbs. My current laptop is ~7.5lbs (it has an extended battery – 12 cells). I also ordered myself a 16gb micro SD card for my phone as I currently have a 2gb card in there. The great thing about shopping online is that they can send it directly from the warehouse to the closest store and you just go and pick it up! Overall it’s been a good couple of days.