Christmas Cookies

So sorry for the late post but the holiday season was quite hectic this year.

Christmas would not be complete without a few homemade cookies. 

This year just happened to be the season of the mustache in our household, so we made some iced sugar cookies shaped accordingly.

We made a bit of a mess, but at least we are using our large island to capacity.

Here are the step by step images for our handmade mustache cookies.

 We were a bit non-traditional with our cookies since most of them were going to our neighbors. We have a family of Jehovah's Witnesses on our block and did not want to offend anyone.

Mustaches, giraffes and millennium falcon cookies don't offend anyone right?
Happy Holidays!

New Growth

Just last spring, we bought some bare-root fruit trees for our backyard.

A pecan tree, mandarin orange, lime and a pink-lady apple tree. 

We know it was going to take a long time to grow but at around $20 a piece, they are more cost effective than buying full-sized trees.

They look like we are trying to grow broomsticks, but we are optimistic.

Just this December, we noticed our little tree has some little apples growing on it! Yeay!

Go little tree!

 Since we need the little tree to grow tall instead of growing crab-apples, we had to remove the apples. Sorry little guy.

They at least tasted like apples...sour apples, but apples.

Maybe in a few years, we will have full-sized apples for our future children to pick!

Blessing Bag

Last fall, I found a link on Pinterest about blessing bags and thought that they would be a great idea.

We are always trying to find small ways to give back and to help people out. We are always wary of giving out money to people on the street since we don't know what they will spend that money on. 

With the blessing bags, we are giving them things that they need including some food.

We started with a gallon sized Ziploc bag and started cramming as much stuff in as possible.

Our bag has the following items: water bottle, deodorant, shampoo, soap bar, antibacterial, razor, brush/mirror, hand-wipes, neosporin, toothbrush, pain reliever, toothpaste, band-aids, crackers, granola bar, gum, beanie, socks and a $5 McDonald's gift card.

We handed out our first bag just last week to a man on an off-ramp in Stanton. We made sure to explain that there was a gift card and food in the bag when we handed it to him. 

He seemed grateful.

It does make your heart feel good to help someone out, even in a small way.

Fill your bag with whatever you think is best. Included in our bag was a note card with contact information for a few local shelters and places for food, training, etc. 

One can only hope that we at least made that man's evening a little bit better.