Dreaming of Pastries

Just finished painting my Christmas Cards!

This is a record for me.  I usually plan to do them in August, then hope to have them done before Thanksgiving.  Then tell myself I will paint them Thanksgiving weekend.  Thanks goodness Thanksgiving came early this year.  I was able to get my Christmas cards painted this week ... after the weekend.

Now I would love to show them to you, but that would spoil the surprise to those who are on my Christmas card list.

Each year, since 1995, I have been hand painting my Christmas cards.  Except for maybe 2 years when it was just impossible to do so.  And yes, I got complaints from those on my list!  Can you believe it?  And from people who just sign a store bought card and stuff the envelope and at least half of those use computer printed address labels.  What nerve!

While I was painting my cards, this afternoon I started craving M&Ms.  You'll have to wait to see the card in a few weeks, I'll post a picture.  Then you'll see how the M&Ms fit in.  After handwriting, yes handwriting the verse on the inset and signing my name I started thinking about Napoleons.  On November 3rd I baked for the very first time Napoleons for my husbands birthday.  I started at 10 am and was finally done with them at 5 pm.  They were awesome!  Someday, I will bake them again.

And for non-believers, here's a few of my step by step photos.  It all starts with a square of homemade dough.  The secret is that it is not really hard, it just takes a bunch of steps with a bunch of waiting in between steps.