Festive cookies.

So I don't really have anything interesting to blog about, so I've decided to share one of my new favourite recipes. I think it's more because they are shaped cool and I get to use my cookie cutters but yeah, you can decide why you think I like them.lol.

SHORTBREAD RECIPE

Ingredients

Serves: 36

250g (2 cups) plain flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

250g butter

125g (1/2 cup) caster sugar

Method:

Prep: 25 minutes

Cook: 15 minutes

1. Preheat oven to 160 C.

2. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the sifted dry ingredients and mix until combined together. Chill until dough is easy to handle, about 10 minutes.

3. On a lightly floured surface roll dough out to 5mm thick. Cut into desired shapes and place on ungreased baking sheets.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

So yeah, it's a pretty easy recipe with lots of butter (luckily it was on special at New World!) and it's fun to make :)

ICING

Ingredients

Icing sugar

Hot water

Food colouring

Method:

1. Fill a bowl with icing sugar.

2. Carefully add drops of hot water and mix slowly. (Not too much or it will be too runny).

3. Separate icing into separate bowls.

4. Add food colouring to each bowl.

Yeah, I made this up myself.haha.

Kiwi ingenuity - use roll from
gladwrap as rolling pin.lol. 

Awesome Christmas cookie cutters!

Posing with the cookies before they go in.
I didn't let Rose make any though.

Before they go in. Yep.

Mmm.. they look good.

Lots of icing, lots of colours :)

My personalised 'O' shaped cookie.

Rose did this one. I was mad.lol.

Angels.

The best one.

'Fallen angels' - Yep Laura broke them.haha.
Nah we accidently broke one each when pulling
them out of the tray.

Didn't get a close up of the trees but
they were the best. I like these cookies :)

The stars. And a black circle?

Laura's 'L' and my 'O' and a random
'l' letter to spell out 'LOL'.

What a mess.

At least I cleaned it up.lol.

Yeah, so if you are keen to bake, these are really easy. Just beware they can break easily if you don't pick them up carefully. These cookies are fun to make (when you're not extremely tired) and they taste good too. (As long as you haven't just had a giant chocolate chip cookie.lol)

BEDD Day 9: Complete.

Setting up the Tree!

Yay! It's nearly Christmas time :) And so December means putting up the tree and all the decorations and just enjoying the holidays (well for those of us on holiday now anyway) so yeah I thought it would be cool to blog about our Christmas and the traditions we have.

Yep, so if you know me and my family you'll know that we've had our old Christmas tree since before Aimee was born. That's like 20 years! So finally Mum and Dad decided to buy a new one, and of course Rose picked it and it's so tall (like 7ft) that it nearly touches the ceiling. Anyway, I love it. I mean, it's Christmas! Who couldn't love this time of year?

New Christmas tree!

Yep, so last night when Mum and Dad brought it home, me and Rose set up the decorations ready to go on the tree. It's kind of a tradition, I guess to put them in colour co-ordinated piles. Yep, weird I know but ever since we were kids and Christmas time came around, Mum would make us put all of the decorations into colour piles and then she would put them on the tree so that there wouldn't be clumps of one red here, then clumps of gold there or whatever.haha.

Colour co-ordinated decorations.

And yep so below are some of my favourite decorations. They are photo frames which Mum bought a few years ago and put pics of all the grandchildren into them. I think it was cos' we were low on decorations and needed some new ones.lol. Yeah, I have other favourites too but they wouldn't upload properly :(

Cool photo decorations Mum
made a few years back.

Yep, and I think the next photo is a tree which we got from someone else and Mum decided to make it a Pasifika tree with the angels made out of the tapa cloth stuff and had only gold and green decorations. It's pretty cute actually. I like it.

Our 'island' tree.

And, finally there is no Christmas without the nativity set. Of course, the whole reason for Christmas is because of Jesus' birth so yeah I like this set. And it's from Jerusalem.. I think.haha. Anyway, yeah it's pretty awesome!

Our nativity set from Jerusalem :)

And yeah so this is like my 3rd post about Christmas already and it's only the 5th of December. Hm, well guess I just need to go out more this week, month etc. Ok, well bye for now.

:)

When Boredom Strikes...

So I actually have no idea where this post will go but meh I haven't blogged in a while so here we go...

Ever notice that when 'holidays' swing by there is always someone who is like "Mum, what are we doing today? I'm bored." then minutes later is like "Mum, we never do anything. It's the holidays!!" Well, this was me a few years ago and is still currently Rose (my little sister) but I've come to realise over the past few holiday breaks that boredom is a-okay. I think I would much rather be bored in my holidays than have to do piles of homework and stuff for school. This is because these 'holidays' are not actually a holiday, it is more like a two week study break in which I am suppose to revise a years worth of content for all six of my subjects to prepare myself for the mind draining, boring exams in November which pretty much determine my future (since NCEA Level Two is the most important part of my education as school likes to tell me). So that is enough of my rambling on about school and stuff. Yeah.

Now what have I actually been up to..

Well, there is this girl called Uli who I've been hanging out with. She is from Germany and is doing a world trip and New Zealand was one of her places to come to. Cool huh? Yeah. So on Saturday, Aimee and I took her into town to see the Sky Tower which overlooks Auckland City.

 So this is me, my sister Aimee on the left and Uli in the middle waiting for the train. I had to take the photo which is why I look weird. Haha.

 Up in the Sky Tower. Standing on the glass. Everyone takes this photo, right?

 I think Aimee misses London a bit...

Me and Uli in the Sky Tower.

So yeah that was pretty fun. We also tried to go to the waterfront - like where 'The Cloud' is but we chose the wrong time to go. It was like 5.30pm so everyone going to watch the France vs. England game was lining up and yeah people were drinking and smoking so we left.

What else have I been up to? Well, of course I've been watching the rugby. Yeah I watched the All Blacks vs. Argentina game. It was lame. Hardly any tries so yeah not much to cheer for. Best thing about the rugby this past weekend though was watching Mum watch Australia vs. South Africa and not saying a word. She couldn't choose a team to cheer for so for the whole 80 minutes it was quiet. Hahahaha. Love you Mum. PS. Let's hope the AB's beat Aussie and get to the finals! We didn't have the RWC here for nothing, did we? (Actually I don't care but whatever it would be nice to win.)

And on a final note, I should be using my time more productively - like getting off Facebook and Blogger. Time to knuckle down and get some study done. Oh well I'll get back to you on that one...

Good bye for now :)