Last night Jason and I went shopping for some gingerbread ingredients after I saw this AMAZING post about gingerbread houses that sit on mugs from notmartha.org, and while we were at the Farmer’s Market, Jason realized that last night would be really our only night together until December 29. I have so many babysitting arrangements coming up that we just won’t be able to have any Christmas fun. So while we were at Target, we ran back to look at their trees, found one for under $30 in clearance, and came home to decorate.

I started by making some puff pastry cookies. I wanted to make pie crust cookies, but all I found at the tiny Kroger in Decatur was some ready-made puff pastry sheets. Not a bad thing, though!

They turned out so crispy, puffy, yummy-delicious! I sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, and was seriously debating pouring milk over them for breakfast.

I used some bite-sized cookie cutters which made them easy to pop on each trip past their resting spot on the stove. Jason almost had to duct tape their container closed.

I also made gingerbread dough for the little gingerbread houses. We used blackstrap molasses, which, along with all the other spices made the dough taste really, really, REALLY strong. The dark molasses also gave the dough a dark brown color that, as I piled up the dough on plastic wrap to rest in the fridge, looked like poo!

We also decorated the tree, but by the time we finished it was 2:00 AM, so there aren’t any pics of the finished tree yet. I did get a lot of pictures of the cats checking it out, though.

Nugget and Fat Stinky are celebrating their first Christmas.

What a fun night!

I bought bananas from Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market thinking they might quickly brown with the intention of baking something with them. They were about an hour away from black death this evening so I ran by a local chain grocery to grab some pecans, and found some peanut butter swirl chocolate chips at a major discount so I was like, “OH YEAH” and made some “Elvis” cookies! (I took pics with my iPhone, so apologies for the graininess.)

I based my cookies on this recipe from Simply Recipes: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_cookies/

Last Monday was my 25th birthday. I have such conflicting views about number 25- I feel like I’m at a point where I can’t make childish mistakes and yet I certainly don’t feel 25 compared to everyone else I know. Most of my friends are at least 2 years older than me and I feel close to some of the parents I babysit for who are in their 30s. I’ve always had people tell me they think I’m older than I actually am- when I was General Manager at the radio station, someone thought I was at least 27 when I was really only 22. Birthdays are weird. It’s just numbers.

I went out of town to Savannah, Georgia the weekend before my birthday (October 2-4) and had a lot of fun. I got to visit another great cemetery, Bonaventure, and did a little shopping. We visited the SCAD store and holy crap I wish I had money to burn because it would all be spent there. We also visited the Gryphon Tea Room across the street from the SCAD store and a nice little coffee shop called The Sentient Bean that reminded me of Joe’s here in East Atlanta. We sampled some scrumptious peanut butter chippy ice cream at Leopold’s on Broughton and even did a nice little tour on a trolley bus.

Famous Little Gracie tombstone in Bonaventure Cemetery

One of two twin gorgeous Victorian “Gingerbread” homes.

What would Savannah be without gorgeous oaks with moss dripping from the branches?

Despite Jason’s expression, he was really enjoying that double scoop ice cream cone. It was 70 degrees in Atlanta, and 80+ in Savannah that day!

More Savannah pics are at my Flickr account.

As far as the real world goes, I’m currently compiling a list of the young adult books I’ve read so far into a slide show project for class. I’m using Apple’s Keynote from iWork ‘08 so I’ll be exporting it into a PDF for my teacher. If I figure out how to do it, I’ll post the PDF here if anyone is interested. We’re supposed to read 24 YA books this semester and we’re at the mid-point and turning in our first 12. Anything over 285 pages counts as two and I’ve got 10 slides at the moment. I just started The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and am really intrigued by the narrator’s direct, but detailed manner of explaining a scene.

And because she is just so freaking precious, I need to post this video of Nugget getting some love. (Turn the volume up!)

Nugget Loves to Love from Cassie Smith on Vimeo.

I’ve seen all these awesome pictures of craft rooms floating around the Interwebs lately. Whip Up featured some spectuacular rooms recently that make me pine for a steady income so that I can ravage IKEA and organize to my heart’s content. At the beginning of January I completely cleaned and organized my craft room and posted the pictures on Flickr. I look at those pictures and just sigh. I wish I were the type of person who is able to simply put things away after use. Instead I tend to let things simmer, pile up, and expand until I have a mini-meltdown and clean everything at once.

Things are in another expansion phase right now. I have a feeling that after posting this I’ll be overcome with shame and having major cleaning session tomorrow afternoon. I’m the messiest person I know, but boy do I love to organize!

The left side of the room is obviously the space I occupy and use the most. Definitely could stand some de-cluttering.

This is my spinning corner. I just hung a calendar set from Jess Gonacha, but my arrangment isn't doing so well. The brown boxes used to hold all my yarn.

I did get the chance to reorganize the closet this week. It may not look like it, but things are much easier to reach and my books are better arranged. The yarn is now in clear plastic containers- much better than cardboard boxes.

I love how these clear containers wrangle the yarn and display it so nicely. No more cats in the yarn boxes.

So there it is. The craft room in all its messy glory. I’d love to see pictures of your craft/creating rooms and want to post a few of them. I love finding new inspiration for this room because, in turn, it inspires me!

And since I said the other day that I’d include stuff about my cats, I have a picture for you of Stinky. This cat has the quirkiest personality of any cat I’ve met. She’s such a nut. We’re always finding her making funny faces or odd positions. Here’s a recent pose on our bed:

Lovely, no?

I hope everyone’s had a great Valentine’s weekend. I’ve been battling a slew of various illnesses over the past few days including a stomach virus. The poor boyfriend took me to the Highland Bakery for breakfast and I ate my pancakes and bacon and promptly got sick when we got home. I was so sad because he’d been looking forward to treating me to a Valentine’s breakfast all week and I was looking forward to the Highland Bakery’s super crunchy bacon. Stomach virus aside, it’s been a nice day and I have to share the Valetine from Anenome Letterpress on Etsy I gave Jason- it’s so nerdy!

Brilliant.