beautiful lake pictures, cookies!!, Sunday Soup Invite

Michael and Cookie headed out for a walk Sunday morning (12/22), and he got some great mirror pictures of our perfectly still lake:

I got my blog out, then headed to the kitchen for some KP duty.  First up, I got Sausage Soup in the crockpot: 

and Michael ran to the store to pick up the Italian seasoning I needed, as well as a few other items.  After that I turned back to baking.  

I didn’t get all of my usual candy made, so my boxes to be shipped were looking kinda thin……I put together peanut butter cookie dough and got that all baked: 

A boy and his dog were relaxing and having breakfast in the living room while I was baking:

I made some hot chocolate cookies as well:  

That took several hours and then my honey help me to pack up the boxes:  

My knee was screaming after that, so I spent at least an hour sitting in the living room with my leg up, reading my book  :~).  My honey said he wanted to give me an early Christmas present, because it would be perfect to have before our guests arrived:

OMword....is that not the most perfect thing ever?????  I absolutely LOVE it!!

By then it was late afternoon and Michael and I got the kitchen table set (another chance to use the Christmas china):

and got artisan bread in the oven:  

You know, when I make artisan bread, I make it in this bowl:

And I love it because it reminds me so much of my mom's bread bowl, off white with 2 blue rings around the top....did your moms have a bowl like that as well?

I have wanted to do a Sunday Soup invite for YEARS, and finally got it together enough ti quietly kick off the Christmas week.  Our guests arrived at 6 PM

Joann

Joann & Joanne

Anne & Larry

Anne

for a casual dinner of soup and bread: 

followed by some of my freshly baked cookies!  

We shoo’ed them out after about an hour and settled in to relax, knit and watch TV.