World’s Best Sugar Cookies

This past week-end, Ike and I were baking up a storm.

Since blogland is pretty quiet this week, I figured I’d post a few of our favorite holiday recipes.  Mainly because I like having easy access to them.  It pays to blog.

Our very favorite holiday recipe is our sugar cookie recipe.  I know others claim to have the best sugar cookie recipe.  But they are wrong.  Ours is the world’s best.  Which makes me think of Elf. “You did it! Congratulations! World's best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody! It's great to be here.”

But seriously.  Our sugar cookie recipe is the best.  Make it.  Try to prove me wrong.

World’s Best Sugar Cookies

• 1 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking poswer
• 1 tsp. salt

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth.  Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Cover.  Chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).  Preheat over to 400.  Roll out dough on lightly floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter.  Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake 6-8 minutes in preheated over.  Cool completely.

Frosting for World’s Best Sugar Cookies

Combine:

• 2 Tbsp butter (softened)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• ~1 Tbsp milk (more or less)
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla

I left out the yellow snowman that Nate made…

Got a sugar cookie recipe to rival ours?  Does your significant other make inappropriate sugar cookies?

Holiday Home Tour

Today is the big ol’ Christmas tour of homes over at The Nester.  I had planned on posting each room separately and then combining them into one big ol’ post.  Somehow December has slipped away from me.  Something about having a sinus infection for 6+ weeks has put the blog on the backburner.   As my brother always tells me, “Don’t make excuses, Michelle. Make improvements.”  So today…giant house tour post.  I can’t promise the post will be coherent but you all are just here for the pictures anyways, right?

Let’s start with the living room.  The living room is where we spend a good chunk of our time at home.  It’s so cozy right now. The tree lights are turned on as soon as we walk in the door each night.

Our tree is rocking the silver and gold this year.  And brown paper packages tied up with string.  (Ha. Ha.  Now you have that song in your head too.)

The walkway is sporting some lighted garland.  I think the garland on the stairs/walkway is one of my favorite parts of decorating for the holidays.

This is what the ol’ living room looks like when the sun is out. Which isn’t often.

Our mantel is simple yet elegant.  Or at least that’s what I tell myself.  Feel free to vote for it over on Emily Henderson’s facebook.  (The ways I choose to spend my precious free time amaze me.  Mainly I need a few of you to vote for me so I don’t seem like a huge loser.  I’m okay with being a medium loser.  Humor me.)

The console table is celebrating it’s first Christmas.  They grow up so fast.

Our dining room is decked out in silver.  It houses are second tree.  We decorate this tree after the big one. It always seems weird to decorate a tree without a ladder.  Weird and awesome.

The kitchen is currently a disaster cookie zone so we’ll just go with this Instagram photo.  Mkay?  The only holiday decorations in the kitchen are a poinsettia, a Santa cookie jar, and lots of cookies.  Mmm, cookies. I’ll have some stellar cookie recipes for your later this week.

You saw our mudroom yesterday in all of it’s red and painted nutcracker merriness.

The eating area is sporting a little ol’ tree.  If you haven’t caught on to our theme, it’s “less is more.”

Except when it comes to Christmas lights.

We have to go now.  We need to squeeze in one last walk before the first snow of the season hits.

You check out all of our holiday posts on our "Holidays 2012" tab!

Mudroom Merriness

Thanks to everyone for helping us celebrate our 2 year blog birthday on Friday!  I’ll be back after the holidays to answer questions and maybe do a little more blog birthday celebrating.

I have had our house mostly decorated for Christmas since early December but somehow I haven’t shown very much of it on the ol’ blog.  The shame.

Today I’d like to share with you our mudroom.  I took all of these photos myself because Nate was sleepy.  (He did help me frost 1 billion sugar cookies so he’s totally off the hook.)  My photography skills are pretty awful. I do good work.



The chalkboard needed some holiday love. I chose part of a quote from my favorite Christmas movie. I watched it twice on Saturday.  Seriously.  If you don’t love the movie Elf, I want you to leave this blog right now.  Or you can stay if you promise to improve your holiday movie taste.



I made some “garland” out of vintage light bulbs and Baker’s twine.  It makes me smile.  I only broke one bulb in the process.  Nate was proud of me.




The nutcrackers are an oldie but a goodie.  I was painting nutcrackers before painting nutcrackers was cool.  The prints I either had or made in PhotoShop.  Because life is merrier with a Wire Fox Terrier.




That’s it.  A few simple touches to make our mudroom merry.



What’s your favorite holiday movie?  Is your house all decorated?