Bog-standard cookies

This is a cookie that Phoebe made for Rachel. Underneath it all is a bell-shaped gingerbread cookie. On top of it is a whole bunch of leftover birthday icing and some candies (and a goldfish cracker) arranged to look like a landscape of sorts—some earth (with a worm), a stream (with a bridge and fish). 

It. Is. A. Masterpiece.

I don't think anyone is going to eat it. But that's okay.

We made the cookies several days ago and they've kept fairly well. But I just don't know that we're going to get around to distribute them to anyone. And at this point the cookies are...getting rather old...so I don't think anyone outside of our family will want them. And that's okay.

Miriam made some lovely swirly stockings:

Here are some people hard at work:

Here's more or less (probably less) what we ended up with (I'm positive Benjamin made the 67 cookie):

And here's what got set out for Santa and his reindeer:

In addition to the sugar cookies (which I made) and the gingerbread (which Andrew made), I made molasses crinkles, using Karen's recipe...with a bit more spice. They're one of my favourite cookies in the world. And I have made them successfully a number of times, but this time they ended up cakey rather than chewy. 

This was a major disappointment. 

Usually those cookies get eaten up as fast as I can make them (by me? maybe) but this time they had the chance to sit around for a few days. 

"You know," Andrew said. "I think time has improved their texture. They are less cakey and more chewy now, pretty much a bog-standard cookie."

"A what?!" I asked, nearly choking on a bite of cookie. 

"A bog-standard cookie," he repeated with confident enuciation.

"That...cannot...be a compliment," I said.

"Bog-standard? Sure—it means average, normal, run-of-the-mill, general..."

"Keep digging," I urged him.

"I just mean...it's a fine cookie."

He was not in trouble by any means—after all, I had been the one to point out that the cookies were not up to par—but I mean...bog-standard?! 

"Bog-standard?!" I said. "Pretty sure anything with the word bog in it can't be a good thing..."

He kept trying to convince the kitchen—now full of wanna-be linguist children—that bog-standard could be a positive thing...but he ultimately failed....because it's not.

If you look it up online, there's even a little warning sign that pops up to tell you that the word is derogatory (that means disrespectful).

So not complimentary. 

Still, my cookies were fine. 

At least they weren't hard!