Sunrise in Monument Valley

Not a bad view for the first night of my tent's maiden adventure! We crawled out of the tent to watch the daybreak and then hurried back inside to escape the cold gusting winds that swept fast across the valley. I snuggled back into the warmth of my bag to get my last few hours of sleep.

The picture was taken this summer, but I just sent this picture in to the tent manufacturer for a photo contest. I wish I had found out about the contest before my road trip so that I could have taken more pictures, but at least I had something to submit. It would be nice to win, but I know there are people out there whose adventures take them to the ends of the world in far more exotic places than Monument Valley. Some day I hope to join them. For now, this'll do.

Holiday Cookies 2007

According to my calculations, I made roughly 40 dozen cookies this winter holiday season. Yikes! I made most of them into gift plates and bags to be given to friends, coworkers and family... and still had an enormous amount left over!

I got the best response about those little pinwheels on the right. I think those are going to be a new family favorite.

Holiday Cookies 2007:

• Macaroons
• Ginger Snaps
• White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies
• Lemon Drops (Coworker gave me homegrown lemons)
• Forgotten Cookies (these were by far my least favorite, but they added nice color to the arrangements)
• Sour Cream and Lemon Snowflakes
• Chewy Chocolate Chip Cocoa Cookies
• Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Medleys
• Chocolate Revel Bars
• Cranberry Orange Pinwheels
• Apricot and Raspberry Pastry Pillows

Regrettably, I did try a recipe from a blog for stained glass cookies that seemed... like not a feasible recipe. However, my curiosity won out over my better judgement and I tried them out anyway. What a disaster! After messing with the dough in attempt to make a decent cookie I lost all interest in continuing and just threw everything out. It was wasteful.

Also, I really wanted to get all fancy and tie up stacks of cookies in pretty little ribbons to be put in boxes and tins, but ran out of time and budget. And I didn't take enough pictures. Looking back, I should have taken more individual shots since together they are rather overwhelming. Oh, and I should have made a peanut butter cookie to add to the mix, too!

White chocolate and raspberry cookies

These little gems came out amazing! It seemed people couldn't get enough of them. They were a little sweeter than I'd prefer (did I use too much white chocolate?), but I think I'm the only one who felt that way. :) Everyone else gobbled them up sans complaint.

P.S. I'm going to admit that on my first time around I burnt the white chocolate and had to run out to buy more after my pilates class. It made this frumpy lumpy blob of burnt. Oops.

Macaroons!

Hooray for macaroons! In the end, I made three batches of these little guys, but I lost an entire batch when I was doing too many things at once and forgot to remove them from the oven. Fortunately that was the only major blunder on my cookie making spree of 2007. Phew!

And sometimes we get snow!

Giddy as a school girl snapping pictures as I drive to work. On the news they were showing people's pictures of the snow capped mountains over Tucson and it was as beautiful as it was foreign. Unfortunately, my picture does the snowfall no justice at all.

Fog gone

Certainly not a great job of trying to catch the sunset whipping past the landscape as I head home from work. This time of year I can't make it home before dark and consequently I get to watch the sunset. What a treat! I don't know why I tried today since there's really nothing spectacular going on. One of these days I'll have to pull out my camera to catch one of the fabulous sunsets we usually have. To me, Tucson's sunsets beat the pants off of anything I've ever seen elsewhere.

Who said we don't get weather in the desert?

Now of course we don't have weather like this terribly often, so it's a total thrill to make my way to work under a blanket of fog. Glee! I love Tucson.

End of the year crunch overtime and tarts

Brian, a coworker, provided us with a fabulous lunch spread including Rubio's a-Go-Go and the decadently tasty desserts depicted in this snapshot at work today. Long story short, I found myself working until 9pm to meet a last minute deadline and ended up polishing off the last four slices of the fruit tart (all that was left of lunch) for dinner . *sigh*

...So yummy, though.