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For my birthday, Chad took me to the National Aviary in Pittsburgh and I got to meet Happy the Penguin! It was AWESOME!

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Time to get a great arms day in with a pizzelle payoff!

This is the third December in a row that Mom & I have made pizzelles. The first year we thought we were in for an all day slog of making batter and putting the dough through two irons. Turns out, making pizzelles isn’t nearly are grueling as both of us had recalled. Go figure.

We mixed up the double batch of Aunt Mary’s pizzelle dough. Oh. My. God. Stirring the flour into that dough is brutal. When my right hand lost feeling from gripping the wooden spoon, I switched to my left hand. When I could no longer get any use of it, Mom spelled me. And still, we still had flour to add. Basically at about the time I would be leaving the gym, arms hanging limply and uselessly at my side, the dough was ready. Alleluia!

With two pizzelle irons going full steam ahead, we made short work of the dough and soon had towering stacks of cookies to show for our efforts! Hooray! Fresh pizzelles are a delight! NOM! NOM! NOM!

That done, we set about making the gingerbread dough for a cookie exchange at work. I’d found a fairly simple recipe, only it didn’t indicate how many cookies it would yield. It seemed like there was no way I was getting four dozen out of just 4 cups of flour, so Mom and I unanimously agreed that we’d better double it. And I had, in fact, been prepared to do so. Until it was time to add the molasses. At which point Mom pointed out that a cup was 8 oz. and I only had a 12 oz. jar of molasses. A quick run to the grocery store and we were in business!At which point part two of arms day began. If I thought the pizzelle dough was terrible, this was insane because the gingerbread dough needed WAY more flour mixed in so that it could be rolled out. So. Much. Stirring. Finally I just gave up and used my hands. Ew. Ew. Ew.

Ten hours later, we had 94 Christmas trees, 30 ferrets and 2 Shakespeare heads. That doesn’t count what we sampled along the way. Oh, plus 2 Ohio outlines.

There’s a good reason I gave up after making only two of the Shakespeare heads…they are rather large. Only two fit on a baking sheet at a time.