Christmas Cookies

On Christmas eve, Thayer and I made cookies.  We used this recipe, which was absolutely delicious, if you don't mind your cookies being made up of about half butter (mmmmmm).  I made colored sugar using some old food coloring, granulated white sugar, and a mortar and pestle.  I think it turned out pretty darn well!  Here are some of the cookies (the more boring shapes, i.e. heart, star, have been omitted and/or eaten before photos could be taken).
Things you can knit:

[T- Jessica was the only one making knitted themed cookies, for some reason...]

Things that live in the Fox River:

[T - I made the Dapnia and the round goby, and if they look kind of simple, it's because they were my first cookies, before I really got the hang of it]

With close-ups: Green Sunfish

And a really one:

Round Goby

 With a real round goby:

 

A Rotifer: Asplanchna

[T - I think making Asplanchna was cheating a bit.  I would have liked to see a little bit more complex one like Keratella]

with the 'real' Asplanchna

Sea lamprey

And a real sea lamprey

A spiny waterflea

And a real spiny waterflea (with a fishhook waterflea)

And finally, as per Bart's request, a (sideways) Daphnia

And a real Daphnia (this is actually one of the photos I took)

Also, Thayer made a bunch of really cool dinosaur cookies

Clockwise from upper left: Velociraptor, Apatasaurus, Stegasaurus, and Plesiosaurus

A closeup on the Steggie, because it is so awesome:

[T - I dunno why my velociraptor didn't get a closeup, I thought it was pretty cool.  I guess this is what happens when you let Jessica take the pictures]

Okay, fine, here's a close up of the Velociraptor

And a HUGE damselfly nymph.  Unfortunately, this cookie broke a lot- segmentation doesn't work quite as well on cookies as it does on insects.

[T- also, cookies do not get stronger the bigger they are, they just get broken]

 

And a giraffe and an elephant.  The giraffe actually started out as my poor attempt at an Apatasaurus.

[T - Jessica also truly unleashed her creative energies at the end of cookie making when we had both lost steam, creating such masterpieces as "snowball," a round cookie, and "pile of smooshed cookie dough," which were no less delicious for their uninspired nature.  By this point I had already made a bunch of dinosaurs and was very done with cookie-making as well.

In other news, we are all alone in Gothic!  John is out visiting for Christmas and Billy headed back into Gunnison, but we're looking after the place just fine on our own.  We did weather station on Tuesday which went swimmingly (turns out getting up the hill on skis is not too bad, as long as you're not doing it in the middle of a blizzard) except for one little part at the end where one of my ski bindings broke!  We went into town today (I borrowed John's snowshoes) and took my skis to the Alpineer to have a look at them.  We shall see what they say about that.  The weather was beautiful for a town trip today, and the snow is nice and firm for really wonderful skiing and snowshoeing, so that was exciting!  We took the sled, because both of our parents gave us Christmas boxes to haul back to Gothic, but the snow was nice and compressed so the the sled actually slid instead of dragging like a big plastic anchor.

 Jessica and I had a really nice Christmas together and we both got very fun things from each other.  Being alone in a cabin surrounded by beautiful scenery and four feet of snow was very romantic and made for a very relaxing Christmas.]

Here is Thayer snowshoeing with the sled.

And a view from the other side (you can see the broken ski in the sled):