Necessary Chocolate

The cookie dough this year

I had so much fun delivering the cookie dough this weekend. While i could easily deliver it at church, all at once, it seems like there hasn't been time to just sit and talk to my friends here for so long. This three-day-weekend turned into one long gab session (with some house repair, laundry, and cleaning in between). Fun.

The labels are by Julia Rothman, via design sponge, and the cookie names are set in Memoir font. As usual, I wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and then in crepe paper. I love crepe paper. It doesn't tear; it puffs out nicely at the edges; and it stretches when I haven't cut it quite wide enough. Unfortunately, labels don't stick to it - I found that out the first year I used it. That's why I print out the wrap-around tags - I can overlap and glue the edges.

New recipe this year - Mapledoodles! I'll share the recipe tomorrow.

 

2010 and the 2009 cookie dough

Okay - I'm at least one week behind still, but determined to record the last few holiday projects. I celebrated the new year by getting the cookie dough made, labeled, packaged, and partially delivered. Yes, once again, despite the whole premise that I can freeze cookie dough well in advance, I didn't manage to make the dough until New Years Eve.

 

I've wrapped the dough in crepe paper for the last few years, and I love the way it works - the stretchiness and the ease with which it ties. The only problem has been that the labels don't stick to crepe paper. This year, I finally smartened up and designed wrap-around labels that I could print onto normal matte paper.

 

The image is a postcard that I bought from ebay years ago, thinking that it would make a lovely Christmas card, in the days when I planned on sending Christmas cards instead of Valentine's cards. Actually, this one might have been in my New Years card phase. i love the image - the beautiful blue color and the fat little birds.

There was only one type of cookie dough this year; I'm not sure if that was a smart choice, or the lazy one. So far, no one has complained!

(For those who like that sort of thing, the labels were set up in Indesign and Photoshop, using Phaeton (love!) and Myriad Pro fonts.)

Some women made Halloween decorations in October

I, on the other hand, made an Isaiah banner.

I've declared "Isaiah Days" as holidays in my class. Anytime we read from Isaiah (as in the Old Testament prophet Isaiah), there will be treats.

I happen to love Isaiah. LOVE. I don't worry about whether I understand it all - I love the language and the imagery that I do get (this is King James Version, of course - none of that modern prose for us). I want the students in my class to feel that same love. Or at least drool whenever they hear him quoted. I've threatened to make them sing "For Unto Us a Child Is Born," but so far they've only had to listen to it.

Today we ate warm apple crisp. They now ask if they can't read a little Isaiah with every class...

In case you like fonts, I used Olduvai for the letters, and Blue Goblet Frames for the swirly frames. I like Blue Goblet ornaments, frames, and vignettes almost as much as Isaiah; they're designed by Cory Godbey, who hosts the Terrible Yellow Eyes site.

(I also made Halloween decorations, but it's a better story if I ONLY made this, don't you think?)

Counting down

Thank you so much for your kind words about my photo. Seeing myself in a photo is usually traumatic, so it's nice to have a positive experience!

This year, I'm determined to enjoy what I'm doing during the Christmas season, instead of what I wish I could do (like get away to NYC for a day). I've started with a couple of advent calendars that are helping me count down the days.

In my seminary class, we're counting down the last ten days of class for 2008. Each day we open an envelope to find an activity for the following day.* Monday we ate chocolate chocolate-chip muffins; today our lesson was held on the floor, with blankets and pillows; tomorrow, we will have hot chocolate with marshmallows, chocolate syrup, and peppermint stick stirrers. Thursday we will try to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. One day next week I plan to have bacon, simply because I think it will be funny for them to read the work "bacon."  It will all culminate in breakfast at my house, where we will open the last envelope and read "sleep in."

If you have any other ideas, let me know. We'll probably do the nativity scene one day, but otherwise I'm hoping for some more inspiration this weekend.

I always wanted to do one of these advent activity calendars - and this one is living up to my expectations. Plus, I used the little clothespins I've been hoarding for YEARS, indulged in using fun fonts, and learned a few new tricks in Indesign.

*To reassure those of you that are religious minded, there are also wallet-size prints of my favorite painting/woodcuts of Christ each day. Just so you know.

My new favorite font

I've had lots of fun playing with the font Olicana Smooth.  It's a beautiful script with lots of swashes, ligatures,  blotches and strikeouts:










Yet another wonder of the internet - the font isn't distributed in the US, but it is available in Britain, and I could purchase and download from there. Cool.

The gifts that are almost done: cookie dough

There are a few gifts and projects that I've yet to finish. In all fairness, I've only been in town a few days of the last few weeks. I had fun with family and friends over Christmas, attended my cousin's wedding over New Years, and then, finally, came home. This weekend I started to catch up a little; last night was my "sleep by the Christmas tree while watching a Christmas movie (Elf)" night.   

And now I need to finish delivering my cookie dough to friends. Once again, I can't help but remember that I started this tradition because it allowed me to MAKE THE COOKIE DOUGH AHEAD OF TIME. I nearly managed that this year - all but one batch was complete before New Years. Now, if I just start a tradition of packaging the cookie dough ahead of time, that plan will work. Until then, I just keep delivering it in January. Year after year.

At least I didn't hand dye the twill tape this year. I used crepe paper to wrap the dough, and to keep any dyes from bleeding I designed the color scheme around cream and beige. It turns out that the Avery sticker paper doesn't, in fact, stick to crepe paper, so I had to glue the stickers on. I've got that all figured out for next year, though - I'll just add another piece of wrapping paper around the center.

The labels were made using Dover clip art and Persimmon font, and they may be my favorite cookie dough labels yet.
 

Only two more packages to deliver. Then I want to make up a pot of soup for a friend who doesn't eat sugar, and THEN there are one or two projects that I want to finish for ME. And then the holidays can be over. Maybe.

1:00 AM at my house

Spray-mounting the posters for my church's upcoming Christmas concert.

This is only interesting because I told EVERYONE that I had finished printing out the publicity materials on Monday. And I did. Unheard of for me. They were designed by Saturday and printed by Monday - and they weren't due until THURSDAY.

But then I thought it would be nice to have more. And then I thought that it would be nice if the posters were mounted to gold paper. But then they didn't look as good as they would if they had a black border. And then I realized at 10:00 last night that I had left my spray-mount at the last church function, and that I'd have to go to the nearest 24-hour WalMart. But other than that, I was done on Monday.

They were worth it - it's not every day I get to play with gold paper.

If you're in the area on December 9th, come on by. I'll be serving gingerbread to 400 people. More on that tomorrow.

(For the sake of the fonts division of this blog: The Hallelujah is Adobe Bickham Script - one of my favorites. There's rarely an excuse to use it at work, and I'm so glad that we're doing the Hallelujah chorus!)

Fonts at last

Even though "fonts" is listed up on my banner image, I haven't written about that particular obsession yet. Most of the graphic design projects that I do are work-related, or too personal, boring, or churchy to share here. I studied graphic design in college, but I wasn't quite good enough to make it professionally, or so I thought, so I ended up in interior design by default, which led me to historic preservation, and here I am, happier than I ever would have been in graphics.

The love of fonts has never gone away. My favorite font, right now, is Minion Pro, but I also like Garamond Book Condensed and Bickham Script. See? I'm a font nerd. At one point I only allowed myself to buy one font a month.

These are wedding favor tags for my cousin Heather's wedding (this Saturday! Go Heather!). She chose gorgeous fonts (Arcana and Charlemagne) for her invitations, so it was easy to copy them and use them in the tags.

I love doing wedding favors - they're frivolous and fleeting. Very few people save them, and so you can go to town with them without feeling as though you're designing something for posterity. I finished printing, trimming and folding these this morning, and now they're ready to Fedex off to Utah, where they'll join little bird nests filled with Jordan almonds and tied up with pink striped ribbon.

Of course, I complicated what should have been a simple process. I wanted to use the poem, which added the folding task, and then had way too much fun with images:

Pretty, but too busy. I had a scalloped version, and an Echino-like version. In the end, the simple double stripe was best, of course.

And they're done! And speaking of complicating the process, now I can spend tonight unpicking the built-in-slip lining I added to Allison's dress, which adds too much weight and puts too much weight on those little gingham shoulder straps. But more on that tomorrow.

Fonts

I wanted to design books and signs, and studied graphic design in college, but I wasn't quite good enough to do it professionally. It all ended happily - it led me to interior design which led me to historic preservation, and now I write, research, illustrate, and design for an architectural firm. The classes instilled a love of fonts. Some women buy shoes, I like fonts. So here's some favorite font stuff:

This elegant, poetic book by Robert Bringhurst lists the basics of designing readable pages, and qualifies as my favorite reference. It led me to purchase Minion, then Myriad. I'm also a sucker for great scripts that I don't have to pen myself, such as Ex Ponto, Bickham Script, and Persimmon.

I rarely use decorative fonts, but this valentine garland from Amy Karol's angry chicken blog may lead me to yet another purchase...