SusieJ's Advent Calendar: December 3, 2007

The recipe: Pfeffernüsse

This is another cookies that will last for weeks! The Pfeffernüsse dough needs to sit overnight before baking. This is a good weeknight recipe in that you only need half an hour one night to make the dough, and another hour the next night to bake them, rather than spending an hour or two one night.

The surprise: Adobe Christmas card tutorials

Tired of mailing pictures of the kids? Tired of mailing pictures of the cat with the caption "no kids yet"? You can still make your own Christmas cards in Photoshop (or the Gimp). These also look like great tutorials for anyone who misses Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.

Joyeux Lëon?

Back in the days of copious free time at the holiday, my friend Lynn and I would make Christmas cards together one evening in November. We would cover her or my dining room table and sideboard with cards, ink drying from the stamp or block print chosen that year.

This is when I put elementary school art classes to work. With a vague memory of carving linoleum blocks, I bought a Speedball carving kit and a few 3 by 5 inch blocks from my local art store and would carve my own designs. I've used cookie cutters, posterized photos and simple letters as designs. Lynn would buy stamps, multiple colors of papers and ribbons to make elaborate layered and stamped cards. Her cards were the wedding cakes of holiday cards.

Knowing my free-hand art skills were not up to the task, one year I fired up my favorite image editing program (Adobe Photo Deluxe, released 1996), typed the letters NOEL, rotated the O 45 degrees in a seasonal homage to the LOVE statues, and traced the letters onto the block. I painstakingly carved the letters.

Lynn arrived and we got out the card stock and inks. I inked my brayer. I paused, brayer in my hand, and realized I could read that NOEL very well.

I carved another (backwards) NOEL and printed 50 cards in gold and silver. The cards garnered a number of compliments, and I still have both blocks.