Where to shop, where to shop....?

Glenn Reynolds, over at Instapundit.com, asks where we'll do most of our Christmas shopping this year. He has a little click-to-pick survey posted, but I think he has forgotten the one place I go shopping most of all... the art and crafts supply stores, followed immediately by my studio. Oh, yes, and the baking supplies section of the supermarket, too, followed by several days' labor in the kitchen.

In other words, Luecanthemum's Boutique and Unique Gift Emporium, with a no-returns-or-my-feelings-will-be-crushed policy.

Even before I was forced to rethink my budget in terms of what I can do with food stamps, I baked, I made candies, I drew and painted and carved and beaded and sewed most of the gifts I distributed among those I love. This year will be no exception. My bestest pal Mari and I will be taking over Mom's kitchen (my oven died some time ago, & Mari has no oven, as yet, even after all the work the contractors did in her kitchen). We have good Ghirardelli's chocolate -- milk, dark, and almond bark (aka white chocolate)-- plus plenty of eggs and dried fruits and nuts and milk and the knowhow to create all manner of candies and cookies and cakes and stuff.

I'm also known for decorating an artificial tree in my front yard with cheezy plastic ornaments, toys, and tons of homemade kitty treats, to be refreshed daily (sometimes, I put out bird seed ornaments on the neighbor's live blue spruce, as well, but don't tell the cats).

We'll probably make a batch or two of stained-glass-window cookies. The link is to a fairly popular recipe, BTW. Good sour hard candies are pretty hard to track down in this neighborhood, but Mom went to one of those big box stores & bought a big bulk pack of life savers classic rolls of candy, plus I have a very basic ginger cookie recipe which I like to use instead of the standard sugar cookie, and I have a buzillion itty bitty cookie cutters of all shapes, so I can cut hearts into the centers of people and angels, I can put people and animals inside stars, and so on. I try not to repeat myself, artistically.

So, if, during the next few weeks, some of my blogging seems a little on the light side, it's probably because Mari & I have raided Mom's kitchen to to our Christmas shopping.

Dang, I'm all hungry again.