more homemade for the holidays

a butterfly for my sister, originally uploaded by squirrel_of_snooze.
the past two days have been spent frantically baking, wrapping, organizing, cleaning, running errands... it's been busy! i'm sure it's like that for everyone, and i'm sure everyone is wondering when the holiday part of this season will actually begin!

this is a little watercolour mounted butterfly i made for my little sister for christmas. i'm going to wrap it right now, but thought i'd take a photo first! she's 13 so she generally hates everything, so keep your fingers crossed that she hates this less than most things. and keep your fingers crossed that she doesn't know i have a blog, too okay?!

i got the most beautiful painting in the mail today from hadley hutton and i will take a photo of it when i get home and have decided where to hang it. now i'm off to do laundry, wrap some more, and pull my hair out. in that order.

here's what i baked yesterday:

clockwise from top left: les punitions / pine nut rosemary shortbread / chocolate shortbread with cocoa nibs and sea salt / buckwheat butter cookies with cocoa nibs / true spice cookies / world peace cookies

the spice cookies and the world peace cookies are my absolute favourites and i'll definitely make them again next year. and those little puniments, the punitions sablé, are the perfect simple cookie. i baked apricot-pistachio bars over the weekend too, and just pulled them out of the freezer.